Real-time data quality control applied at OBSEA

Abstract

The expandable seafoor observatory OBSEA (https://obsea.es) is located at 4 Km of Vilaonva i la Geltrú (Catalonia, Spain) at 20 m depth. This cabled observatory obtains diferent environmental data from a meteorological station, CTD sensor, hydrophone, ADCP, buoy and seismometer. Previously, the quality control of the acquired data was not in real-time and oversighted erroneous data values guiding to a misunderstanding of the environment. Accounting that the data collected from the OBSEA observatory needs to comply with the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) In Situ Thematic Assembly Center (INS TAC) procedures and the inefciency of the previous data quality control processes, a new automatic realtime data quality control system has been developed. The quality control consists of a set of automatic tests according to the manual for real-time quality control of in-situ temperature and salinity data of the Quality Assurance/Quality Control of Real Time Oceanographic Data (QARTOD, https://ioos.noaa.gov/project/qartod) project of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS, https://ioos.noaa.gov). The follow-through of the QARTOD manual for the development of the tests was made considering the community acceptance, notability and previous work of the IOOS.