Radiation#

radiation loads atmospheric and visible radiation components. It supports climatic forcing summaries, potential evapotranspiration context, and HELP coupling in the hydrological preprocessing chain.

Accepted sources#

Source

Use when

Source page

custom

A local radiation field or station chronicle is authoritative.

custom

sim2

SIM2 gridded radiation should be retrieved over the project period.

sim2

Field details for both sources, including components, path, and the shared timeseries selection fields, are defined in the generated reference: see [data] DataManagersConfig, section data.radiation.

Minimal example#

[[data.radiation.sources]]
source = "sim2"
components = ["atmospheric", "visible"]
extent = "watershed"

The components field accepts atmospheric and visible, either alone or together. Only the sim2 loader acts on it: it issues one request per selected component. A custom source is read as the file is written, so the file itself decides which signal is loaded.

Loaded shape#

Every source is normalized to the internal unit MJ/m2/j. A sim2 source returns one record per requested component, each a full gridded FieldRecord over the requested extent: atmospheric maps to the SIM2 parameter DLI_Q and visible maps to SSI_Q. A custom source accepts a directory of station location and chronicle CSVs, or a single NetCDF/GeoTIFF file, and returns point or field records depending on that input shape.

Downstream code expects the unit to already be MJ/m2/j after loading. Set source_unit when a custom NetCDF or GeoTIFF file does not expose units in its own metadata. Confirm units and period coverage before using radiation in preprocessing.

Radiation Source: custom#

Use source = "custom" for local radiation fields or station series.

[[data.radiation.sources]]
source = "custom"
path = "data/radiation/radiation.nc"

Check units, date coverage, and spatial support, and check which radiation signal the file actually holds: the custom loader does not select it for you.

Radiation Source: sim2#

Use source = "sim2" to retrieve SIM2 radiation fields.

[[data.radiation.sources]]
source = "sim2"
components = ["atmospheric", "visible"]
extent = "watershed"

The overview climatic summary panel plots precipitation and ETP only, so radiation has no dedicated figure. Check the returned records directly: one per requested component, over the requested period and extent.

Downstream uses#

  • ETP context, when potential evapotranspiration is derived alongside radiation forcing.

  • HELP coupling in the hydrological preprocessing chain, which expects daily global solar radiation in a compatible unit.

  • Generic solver-ready forcing assembly, which converts and aggregates radiation the same way as any other climatic variable.