The current model for energy production, based on the intense use of fossil fuels, is both unsustainable and environmentally harmful and consequently, a shift is needed in the direction of integrating the renewable energy sources into the energy balance. However, these energy sources are unpredictable and uncontrollable as they strongly depend on time varying and uncertain hydrometeorological v...

BACKGROUND Based on the well-described excess of schizophrenia births in winter and spring, we hypothesised that individuals with schizophrenia (a) would be more likely to be born during periods of decreased perinatal sunshine, and (b) those born during periods of less sunshine would have an earlier age of first registration. METHODS We undertook an ecological analysis of long-term trends in ...

Sunshine can have a profound impact on the systematic change in climate elements, such as temperature and wind speed, and in turn affects many aspects of the human society. In recent years, there has been a substantial interest in the variation of sunshine duration due to the dramatic global climate change. Hence, there is a need to better understand the variation of sunshine duration in order ...

Net radiation plays an essential role in determining the thermal conditions of the Earth's surface and is an important parameter for the study of land-surface processes and global climate change. In this paper, an improved satellite-based approach to estimate the daily net radiation is presented, in which sunshine duration were derived from the geostationary meteorological satellite (FY-2D) clo...

BACKGROUND Cycling has the potential to provide health, environmental and economic benefits but the level of cycling is very low in New Zealand and many other countries. Adverse weather is often cited as a reason why people do not cycle. This study investigated temporal and seasonal variability in cycle volume and its association with weather in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. METHODS T...

In this study, an analysis of the monthly mean values of the fraction of the sky covered by clouds (C) of all types and the duration of bright sunshine hours (S) and global solar radiation on the horizontal surface (H) was carried out to establish relationship for solar radiation estimation for Bangladesh. The relationship between C and (1 − S/S0), where S0 is the maximum possible hours of suns...

Sunshine duration is an important variable that is widely used in atmospheric energy balance studies, analysis of the thermal loadings on buildings, climate research, and the evaluation of agricultural resources. In most cases, it is calculated using an interpolation method based on regional-scale meteorological data from field stations. Accurate values in the field are difficult to obtain with...