Abstract
This paper reports on a method to estimate the hourly global solar radiation using AMeDAS (Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System) data. The AMeDAS is a weather data measuring system established by the Japan Meteorological Agency and can provide us with accurate, comprehensive data because it covers all of the Japanese islands with 838 measuring stations. One of the authors previously reported a method to estimate the hourly global solar radiation using mainly the hourly sunshine duration measured at the meteorological observatories. In chapter 3, the authors have expanded the same method to apply to AMeDAS and developed the equations for the estimation of hourly global solar radiation from the AMeDAS data. Generally the observed weather data contain such as regional differences and characteristics of instrument sensitivity, which influences the relation between global solar radiation and sunshine duration. In chapter 4, several stations which don't include peculiarity of data were selected according to the examination of the relation between monthly mean global solar radiation and monthly sunshine hours measured with AMeDAS, and coefficients of the equations for the estimation of hourly global solar radiation have been calculated from the data of these stations. In chapter 5, a practical procedure for estimation of hourly global solar radiation have been illustrated and estimated values from the formulae were compared with the measured values. The average values of the correlation coefficients and the standard errors over 20 cities are 0.951 and 0.282 [MJ/(m^2・h)], respectively.
