Quality Control for the Navy Operational Atmospheric Database

Abstract

A new, operational meteorological database has been developed to provide quality-controlled observations for the atmospheric analysis and prediction systems at Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center (FNOC). The quality control procedures for the database were developed by Atmospheric Directorate of the Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Laboratory (now the Naval Research Laboratory), which is collocated with FNOC in Monterey, California. Global observations of atmospheric variables are subjected to various quality control techniques before being added to this database. During preliminary data processing, all observations are checked gross-error limits, multilevel reports are checked for vertical consistency, and multivariable reports are checked for internal consistency. Subsequent quality tests are performed in the analysis to ensure consistency between the observed data and the analysis background and to verify that the observations are supported by the surrounding reports. Additionally, several options are available for subjective intervention, including the creation of synthetic marine observations or the deletion of ship reports. Finally, efforts are being made to use archived quality statistics to determine bias corrections and quality estimates for radiosonde stations.