Category: MeteoSwiss

Solar Potential of Switzerland

The Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE, the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, and the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo have created together with Meteotest a stunningly interactive and publicly accessible solar potential estimator for whole Switzerland. www.sonnendach.ch Compared to traditional so-called GIS-type “solar cadasters” this one is really usable. By usable I mean: …

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The Darkest Spot in Switzerland

By analysis of our MeteoSwiss high quality satellite-based solar irradiance maps created by the Heliomont algorithm I’ve found that the sunniest place in Switzerland is close to the Monte Rosa hut of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC. During the calculation of the Solar Atlas of Switzerland (to be published as “The Solar Cadaster of Switzerland” on the Geoportal of …

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Flowering in the Greenhouse

During the last few decades flowering and leafing of temperate and boreal vegetation has advanced by several days in response to warming. The climate sensitivity, as inferred from long-term observations, is estimated to be 2.5-5.0 days per degree C warming. Wolkovich et al. now show in their letter to Nature, that this response cannot be …

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Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOI’s) are often used to uniquely identify and reference digital content of written documents such as scientific publications or books. This is helpful to track a content over a long time period, where the actual location of the content may change, but any reference to it will have to stay the same. …

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Remote Sensing of Solar Surface Radiation

We have processed a global irradiance and direct irradiance climate data record from the Meteosat first generation satellites (Meteosats 2 to 7, 1983–2005). The CDRs are available free of charge for all purposes from the EUMETSAT‘s Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring Web User Interface at monthly, daily and hourly means at a spatial resolution …

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Satellite-based planning of Solar Energy Applications

My tasks at MeteoSwiss include the analyses of the spatial and temporal variability of the surface solar irradiance with special emphasis on the complex Alpine terrain and the diverse interactions of horizon, snow cover and cloudiness in this terrain. One major result of this work is a satellite-based climatology of solar irradiance including its radiation …

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