Short-term variability of solar radiation

This paper presents a study of the variability of solar radiation in the minute-long time range. The solar climate in Northern Europe is classified in this paper as being either stable, or highly variable, due to stochastic cloud cover inducing fluctuations of the solar irradiance. In general, solar radiation exhibits both positive and negative increments in the radiation during any period. The distribution functions of these increments with respect to their magnitude and duration are investigated, as well the distribution functions of stable intervals during generally variable radiation. The distribution functions are found to be a superposition of two exponential functions with different exponents, which depend on the magnitude of the radiation increments. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.