The global radiation is a key component of the radiation balance equation, which is an important part of the energy balance. Spatial distribution of the global radiation is necessary for surface energy balance models based on the satellite data. The global radiation depends on the geographical location, the relief, the atmospheric transmissivity, and the clouds. Basically, for energy balance models, ground-based measurements of the sunshine duration are used to calculate the global radiation. While on the territory of Russia the visual observations of types and amounts of clouds are standard. The atmospheric transmissivity is usually estimated from ground-based measurements, which do not always indicate the radiation absorption throughout the atmosphere. The atmospheric transmissivity can also be determined from remote sensing data. In this paper we consider a method for estimating global radiation with the visual observation of forms and amount of clouds at meteorological stations and with remote measurements of the atmospheric transmissivity. Slope and aspect are calculated by digital elevation model (DEM) ASTER GDEM to estimate the global radiation spatial distribution. The spatial resolution of ASTER GDEM is 30 m. The atmospheric transmissivity was estimated with satellite measurements of Linke turbidity coefficient, the measurements on the grid 1°×1° are stored in NOAA CLASS system. The radiation measurements data in the World Bank’s ESMAP Solar Resource Mapping project were used to validate the calculations. The root-mean-square error was 107.6 W/m2 and 83.9 W/m2 for two stations. As a result, a computer program was developed to automatically calculate the global radiation spatial distribution.