@inproceedings{24551,
  abstract     = {{Access to precise meteorological data is crucial to be able to plan and install renewable energy systems 
such as solar power plants and wind farms. In case of solar energy, knowledge of local irradiance and air temperature 
values is very important. For this, various methods can be used such as installing local weather stations or using 
meteorological data from different organizations such as Meteonorm or official Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). An 
alternative is to use satellite reanalysis datasets provided by organizations like the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration (NASA) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). In this paper the 
“Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications” dataset version 2 (MERRA-2) will be presented, 
and its performance will be evaluated by comparing it to locally measured datasets provided by Meteonorm and DWD. 
The analysis shows very high correlation between MERRA-2 and local measurements (correlation coefficients of 0.99) 
for monthly global irradiance and air temperature values. The results prove the suitability of MERRA-2 data for 
applications requiring long historical data. Moreover, availability of MERRA-2 for the whole world with an acceptable 
resolution makes it a very valuable dataset.}},
  author       = {{Khatibi, Arash and Krauter, Stefan}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings of the 38th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (EUPVSEC 2021)}},
  isbn         = {{3-936338-78-7}},
  keywords     = {{Energy potential estimation, Photovoltaic, Solar radiation, Temperature measurement, Satellite data, Meteonorm, MERRA-2, DWD}},
  pages        = {{1141 -- 1147}},
  title        = {{{Comparison and Validation of Irradiance Data: Satellite Meteorological Dataset MERRA-2 vs. Meteonorm and German Weather Service (DWD)}}},
  doi          = {{10.4229/EUPVSEC20212021-5BV.4.11}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}