Definition of Quality Control procedures for HF Radar data
Lead: AZTI (Julien Mader)
Email address: Please login or register to view contact information.
Integrated HF radar networks providing real-time information with unified quality control have been operating in the United States (US-IOOS, http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/hfradar/) and in Australia (ACORN, http://www.ees.jcu.edu.au/acorn/), providing key information for scientific and societal needs. In Europe, although some countries have started to implement operational HF radar systems in the coastal area, a unified HF coastal radar network has not been implemented yet, nor the parameters observed and derived from HF radars have been part of the main European IOOS projects such as Copernicus and MyOcean2. EuroGOOS is currently leading an on-going initiative aimed at coordinating existing HF radar systems and starting to organize a European HF radar group.
In order to assess the implementation of a distributed system providing a research and operational access to HF radar data, this task will tackle the two following points.
-
Data model
The characteristics of the data that will be provided have to be standardized. Different levels of data products can be established: Quality controlled radial currents plus error (Level 1); Gridded total vector velocities (Level 2) and Objective analysis of gridded surface current maps (Level 3). Suitable temporal (hourly, daily…) and spatial (grids) scales for the provided data need to be defined. For HF radar data implementation in European marine data infrastructures, a data model will be defined taking into account specificities of the systems and uses.
-
Quality Control
There is no currently standard QC procedure established for the evaluation of these data at European level. Although using HF Radar to measure surface current velocity and direction has been accepted in the community, the assessment of data quality is an ongoing research area (JRA in task 3.2 of WP3). QC standard methodology will be defined for the coordinated implementation of delayed-mode and near real time HF Radar data access. Two steps of algorithm will be successively recommended: the first one based on the harmonization task performed in WP2, task 2.3, and the second one at the end of the project taking into account Joint Research Activities performed in Task 3.2 of WP3. Effect of specific unfavourable conditions (low energy bragg waves, storms…) will be considered in the algorithm.
Deliverables:
D5.13 Recommendation report 1 for HFR data implementation in European marine data infrastructures (M16), including recommended common metadata and data model for HF radar
D5.14 Recommendation Report 2 on improved common procedures for HFR QC analysis (M36)
