International audienceThe European Commission is realizing the first digital European solar radiation atlas of the Greater Europe. Climatological maps of the global radiation available at ground are to be constructed. For that purpose, radiation data have been collected which have been measured at about 300 meteorological ground stations. These stations are mostly located in Western Europe and therefore any interpolation technique applied to these data will provide poor results outside this area. Radiation maps derived from satellite images are used as a constraint to the interpolation procedure (kriging), though they are less accurate than the ground measurements. This study shows that, compared to an interpolation of the ground measurements alone, merging satellite-derived maps and ground-based measurements improves the assessment of the global radiation in any geographical location which is not a ground station, and peculiarly for those far from any ground station. The relative error is a whole lower than 10 % and decreases down to a few percent when approaching a ground station
