Ten years of 1 Hz solar irradiance observations at Cabauw, the Netherlands, with cloud observations, variability classifications, and statistics

Abstract. Surface solar irradiance varies on scales down to seconds, of which detailed, long-term observational datasets are rare but in high demand. Here, we present an observational dataset of global, direct, and diffuse solar irradiance sampled at 1 Hz over a period of 10 years, from the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) station at Cabauw, the Netherlands. The dataset is complemented with irradiance variability classifications, clear-sky irradiance and aerosol reanalysis, information about the solar position, observations of clouds and sky type, and wind measurements up to 200 meters above ground level. Statistics of variability derived from all time series include approximately 185,000 detected events of both cloud enhancement and cloud shadows. The Cabauw measurement site has additional observations freely available at the open data platform of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. This paper describes the observational site, quality control, classification algorithm with validation, and the processing method of complementary products. These observations and derived statistics provide detailed information to aid research into how clouds and atmospheric composition influence solar irradiance variability, and to help validate models that are starting to resolve variability at higher fidelity. The main datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7093164 (Knap and Mol, 2022) and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7092058 (Mol et al., 2022b), see the data availability section for a complete list.