Long-term analysis of clear sky at astronomical sites: a comparison between polar and geostationary satellites

In this paper, we analyse three sites of great astronomical importance: Mt Graham, Paranal and La Silla. In recent years, with the development of new telescopes, the study of cloud cover is getting more and more important for the selection of new sites as well as for the development of existing telescopes. At the moment there is discussion on the techniques used to study climatic conditions. We have mainly two large data sets: satellite data and ground data. The two sets have advantages and disadvantages. We study in detail the various data available and we compare these data and analyse the correlations between them. In particular, we focus on the long-term statistics for the trends in climate change. We use two satellites: GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) and Aqua. In particular, we use the GOES camera data and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data, which is a key instrument aboard the Aqua satellite. Finally, we use the heliograph ground data of the Columbine weather station to validate the two families of satellite data. The use of such data allows a mutual validation of the results, which allows the analysis to be extended to other sites. We obtained a mean night cloud cover for the 10 yr analysed (2003-2012) of 12 per cent at Paranal, 22 per cent at La Silla and 37 per cent at Mt Graham. We also get a punctual correlation of 96 per cent between the two satellites and of 92 per cent between the satellite and the heliograph data at Mt Graham for 2009.