February 2012 marked the establishment of the Quality Assurance for Real Time Oceanographic Data (QARTOD) project. The objective of this project was to regulate and make sure that a systematic process was used when using procedures for quality assurance and control in the observation of oceanic data. NOAA’s National Data Buoy Centre collaborated in this project as well. Together they are designing manuals each providing a checklist of QC tests for the collection of real time information that includes steps for the control of sensors as wellas those for collected data that are imperative for accurate data collection. Each test is very user friendly and the manual provides QA best practices in the manual’s appendix. These publications are of great aid for those in the ocean observing community, who in return helped in writing the manuals.
The latest manual published, Temperature and Salinity, the fourth publication from the US IOOS QARTOD can be downloaded from http://www.ioos.gov/qartod/. Another manual about Water Level will be published soon after.
To see what has been published up till now and what will be published please go to the website: www.ioos.noaa.gov
References: www.facebook.com/usioosgo
