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Any data for grand forks North Dakota? Or Fargo North Dakota?
I'll take a look. Remember we can only use data from 2013 to present as that email stated cause that is when all stations converted to the 5 min solar radiation data that was averaged from ten second intervals. So every ten seconds it measures the sunshine and then every five minutes it logs the five min average based on all the ten second readings. Before 2013 they dumped a lot of the ten second data as it was too much so the five minute avg wasn't very accurate.
I'll take a look. Remember we can only use data from 2013 to present as that email stated cause that is when all stations converted to the 5 min solar radiation data that was averaged from ten second intervals. So every ten seconds it measures the sunshine and then every five minutes it logs the five min average based on all the ten second readings. Before 2013 they dumped a lot of the ten second data as it was too much so the five minute avg wasn't very accurate.
As a general rule of thumb, US locations seem to have their annual sunshine hours overstated by around 5-10%. I'll wait for RWood to comment on this, but I will say that New Zealand has a similar issue since switching sunshine recording methods at some sites. Places that previously recorded ~2300 hrs manually are now recording ~2700 hrs with automated readings (LOL).
As a general rule of thumb, US locations seem to have their annual sunshine hours overstated by around 5-10%. I'll wait for RWood to comment on this, but I will say that New Zealand has a similar issue since switching sunshine recording methods at some sites. Places that previously recorded ~2300 hrs manually are now recording ~2700 hrs with automated readings (LOL).
That's certainly right about NZ. Nearly all converted sites have had annual totals increased by 200-250 hours, and some by 300-400 hours. We can't get inter-site comparison to work until all sites are converted - and references to past averages when assessing monthly data are pretty meaningless - until averages are later updated in the established electronic era.
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