Shortwave Radiation (primary pyranometer), DP1.00022.001, has been reprocessed using NEON’s new instrument processing pipeline. All provisional data have been updated, and data for all time and all sites will be updated in RELEASE-2026 (expected to be issued in late January 2026).
The main difference between previous and newly published data is the addition of a set of quality metrics (shadowPassQM, shadowFailQM, shadowNAQM) that reflect instances where the sensors were shaded by obstructions. Many sites in the observatory were found to have objects on the tower that shaded these sensors at various combinations of season and time of day. Many towers have already been reconfigured to resolve this issue, and the remaining are planned or in progress. The updated algorithm includes a quality check that identifies periods of sensor shading based on the geometry of the tower and known obstructions. The final quality flag is also raised during identified instances of sensor shading.
Other changes are minor, including:
Slight increase in data coverage for various sites and time periods
Quality metrics (expanded download package) are now reported as decimal values and no longer rounded to the nearest integer.
Quality metrics indicating the use of a valid sensor calibration (“validCalPassQM”, “validCalFailQM”, and “validCalNAQM” columns) are now populated in the expanded download package. See the variables file included in the download package for full descriptions of these metrics. Note that these are informational quality metrics and do not impact the computation of the final quality flag.
All code used to generate the Shortwave Radiation (primary pyranometer) data product is open-source and available in the NEONScience/NEON-IS-data-processing GitHub repository. For questions or more information please Contact Us. Select DP1.00022.001 in the data product dropdown list.
