GUI based interactive system for Visual Quality Control of Argo data

Abstract

Argo program is aimed at maintaining an array of 3000 free drifting floats to measure temperature and salinity (T/S). Present study consists a PC-based system developed for visualization and quality control of T/S profiles obtained from Argo floats. The system, coded in Java, is user interactive and runs on Windows platform. Default the Argo T/S profiles pass through 19 automatic checks and quality flags are assigned. Using the system, T/S profiles that failed the automatic Argo tests undergo visual review. This visual review is done to determine whether automatic Argo tests were excessively flagging good measurements as bad or vice-versa, to motivate modifications to automatic Argo tests and to determine whether additional tests were necessary to catch problems that could not be detected by the existing tests. Visual review is done by comparing with 1° X 1° monthly climatologies from WOA01. Profile records deviating beyond 2 standard deviations from the mean are flagged as bad. Provision is also given to compare individual T/S profiles with previous 5 profiles via a waterfall plot.