Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This image by the DWD is probably the best for average sunshine distribution, as in 2009 the anomaly was 100-110% on average for large parts of DE.
However, to keep up with poor availability of up-to-date climate information, the latest data the Germans use is the 1961-1990 dataset, where their neighbours to the west switched to 1981-2010 and their neighbours to the east is in the process of doing so, 2012 will be the last year Poland uses 1971-2000.
Good idea - I never knew Taipei was that bad (its hot+cloudy climate looks horrendous, btw), but Taiwan's second city, Kaohsiung, gets 2200 hours, way more than anywhere in our top five.
I'd reckon it's almost certainly not the exact sunniest place on Earth, it's just there's no weather station anywhere that gets more to prove otherwise. If I was in charge of such things I'd try and deliberately set up weather stations in these obscure microclimates out there to see the limits of Earth's climate actually are.
For years there were reference books (can't remember any names now) that asserted that going by cloud cover pictures, parts of the eastern Sahara should average almost 97% of possible sunshine. If this is true, Yuma and environs would certainly rank lower down.
The maps for Poland and Sweden have me asking an unrelated question: why is there a ( comparatively high ) concentration of sunlight hours over the Baltic sea?
The seabreeze blowing the clouds away I suspect - you get a similar thing on the Wales map, i.e. the coast is sunnier (the fact that much of inland Wales is upland areas notwithstanding).
Location: Kowaniec, Nowy Targ, Podhale. 666 m n.p.m.
355 posts, read 977,313 times
Reputation: 497
It's cooler most of the time there (except for autumn) and colder air allows less moisture content. Less moisture content allows less clouds to form, and less clouds mean less blocking of the sun.
This is especially true in spring, when the Baltic is still cold (0-7C/32-45F) but the land starts warming easily up into double digits centigrade allowing for much more convection inland. It's also usually windier along the coast which allows banks of fog to be cleaned out more rapidly. Of course, both of this doesn't matter during autumn and early winter when there is lots of movement in the atmosphere, during these months the coast isn't particularly sunnier than inland.
For years there were reference books (can't remember any names now) that asserted that going by cloud cover pictures, parts of the eastern Sahara should average almost 97% of possible sunshine. If this is true, Yuma and environs would certainly rank lower down.
There probably are spots in the Eastern Sahara that are the sunniest in the world. The only problem is no weather stations to confirm all that.
2768 hrs is the mean for the mainland. Tasmania would bring the figure down further still. So certainly not among the sunniest.
Is that a geographical average or a population weighted average?
Always been curious about this....Obviously the latter would be much lower than the former given the large population settlements in the SE and southern regions.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
