Published July 31, 2026 | Version 1.0
Report Open

BSRN Data Quality Best Practices

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
  • 2. LMD-SIRTA-E4C, Ecole polytechnique
  • 3. ROR icon Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
  • 4. Unisystems
  • 5. ROR icon Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique
  • 6. ROR icon NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon Japan Meteorological Agency
  • 8. Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss

Description

After more than 30 years of operation, the BSRN (https://bsrn.awi.de/) Data Quality Working Group, together with the WRMC, reports here on best practices for data handling and on how to detect common errors visible in radiation data. This document covers the do’s and don’ts of data supervision, and gives recommendations for data collection, sensor setup and maintenance, and data quality checks.

This document focuses on downwelling broadband surface radiation measurements: global shortwave, direct normal shortwave, diffuse shortwave, and longwave downwelling radiation. Upwelling radiation, net radiation, and albedo are not treated here except where they are mentioned for context. In terms of temporal resolution, all considerations and calculations are assumed for 1-minute average (from 1 Hz sampling) measurements, corresponding to the BSRN standards. 

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BSRN_DataQuality_BestPractices_v1.0_20260728.pdf

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Dates

Issued
2026-07-28
Version V1.0