Global radiation, photosynthetically active radiation, and the diffuse component dataset of China, 1981–2010

Abstract. Solar radiation, especially photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), is the main energy source of plant photosynthesis, and the diffuse component can enhance canopy light use efficiency, thus increasing ecosystem productivity. In order to predict the terrestrial ecosystem productivity precisely, we not only need global radiation and PAR as driving variables, but also need to treat diffuse radiation and diffuse PAR explicitly in ecosystem models. Therefore, we generated a series of radiation datasets, including global radiation, diffuse radiation, PAR, and diffuse PAR of China from 1981 to 2010, based on the observations of the China Meteorology Administration (CMA) and the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN). The dataset should be useful for the analysis of the spatiotemporal variations of solar radiation in China and the impact of diffuse radiation on terrestrial ecosystem productivity based on ecosystem models. The dataset is freely available from Zenodo on the following website: https://zenodo.org/record/1198894#.Wx6–C_MwWo (https://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.555, Ren et al., 2018).