The ARM Data Quality Program
Randy A. Peppler, Kenneth E. Kehoe, Justin W. Monroe, Adam K. Theisen, Sean T. Moore · Meteorological Monographs · 2016
As of this writing, nearly 7000 ARM Climate Research Facility data fields from 400 instruments are monitored for data quality control on a daily basis. This chapter reviews the history and evolution of ARM Program data quality assurance since the beginning of the program and describes the processes in place today. It also provides advice to those who collect field data, especially in an operational context. ARM’s infrastructure was charged to produce data of “known and reasonable quality” for use by climate researchers. This is challenged by the fact that there are hundreds of different instruments of varying types in different climatic locations, translating into thousands of individual data (variable) streams. Some of these variables are geophysical variables (or will be processed by some algorithm to be such), but many are intended purely to help characterize the state of the instrument that made them (e.g., instrument temperature). The goal of the data quality program is to assess the quality of all of these variables.