Minimum Quality Control software

Minimum Quality Control (MQC) software, version 3

The Expert Team on Marine Climatology requested that the Global Collecting Centres (GCC) provide a piece of software to process  observations from Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS) within the  Minimum Quality Control (MQC) guidelines set out by JCOMM. This followed several requests from Contributing Members who operate VOS under the Marine Climatology Summary Scheme (MCSS).

This software is now available (here) under its third version and can be ordered directly from the GCCs or the WMO, free of charge. The GCCs are also responsible for any necessary upgrades to the software.

The first update included a check for invalid characters in the additional fields columns, 133-151, "Requirements for VOSClim Project". The second update incorporates quality control for VOSClim elements and flags belonging to them.

This software provides the source code only, which is written in FORTRAN 90 under the ANSI standard.  The implementation under the local operating system is left to the user, as computer environments are different world-wide.

The intention is to correct the original data in line with the Minimum Quality Control Standards (MQCS-V) wherever it is possible, especially when flags are set to 0, 2, 3 and 4. The information relating to any errors found, are given in the program output. Sometimes more detailed checks are provided, as described below.

This procedure could lead to a significant increase in quality, as any data correction is best done close to the data source. The corrected data may be run through the program as often as is needed for an acceptable outcome. The final output from this process should serve as the input to the GCCs.

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