As solar power becomes more important, sunshine duration has become a critical variate for meteorological observations and research. In this review, the evolution of the operation principle and construction of sunshine recorders was summarized. Sunshine recorders were classified according to their measurement methods, and their historical and technological development were reviewed. Characters, such as thresholds, uncertainties, maintenance, and operational cost of different sunshine recorders, are compared. Then, the advantages and disadvantages of each measurement method and the sensors applied to the sunshine recorders were also discussed. At the end of the paper, we concluded that photoelectric sunshine recorder is currently the best option for sunshine duration measurement due to high-precision and low cost, and the thermoelectric sunshine recorder has the potential to dominate the sunshine duration measurement market for their wide spectral response range. The pyrheliometric and pyranometric methods are the mainstream for designing recorders in the future period.

随着太阳能变得越来越重要，日照时长已成为气象观测和研究的关键变量。在这篇综述中，总结了日照记录仪工作原理和结构的演变。阳光记录仪根据其测量方法进行了分类，并回顾了它们的历史和技术发展。比较了不同日照记录仪的阈值、不确定性、维护和运行成本等特性。然后，还讨论了每种测量方法的优缺点以及应用于日照记录仪的传感器。在论文的最后，我们得出结论，光电日照记录仪由于精度高，成本低，是目前日照时长测量的最佳选择，热电式日照记录仪因其光谱响应范围广，有可能在日照时长测量市场上占据主导地位。日射光法和日射光法是今后设计记录仪的主流方法。