THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR RADIATION THROUGHOUT SOUTHERN AFRICA

Abstract

Since about 1950, considerable emphasis has been placed upon the registration of solar radiation in Africa by a number of the meteorological services of the territories on the continent. It is now considered that sufficient data have been assembled, with the earlier series of measurements available, to permit undertaking of the first cartographical presentation of the total short-wave radiation incomes over southern Africa. Unfortunately there is, at present, insufficient material to allow the maps to be extended northward of the equator. Twenty-three series have been used in the construction of summer and winter seasonal maps; computed values at seven other locations were employed to improve the presentation. The seasonal areal distributions of the solar radiation, on a horizontal surface, are compared with those for the continental United States for the corresponding summer and winter periods. At ten of the stations forwarding data regularly to the World Meteorological Organization radiation center at Pretoria, records of the diffuse sky component are separately available. With the derived, average indirect fluxes for Brukkaros — the old Smithsonian Institution station in South-West Africa — these measurements constitute the densest network of its kind anywhere. The general results are discussed.