QuinCe: An online tool for processing and quality control of surface ocean CO2 measurements

Scientists collecting surface ocean CO₂ measurements must perform data reduction and quality control (QC) prior to further usage of the data. Tools for these tasks are typically developed by the scientists themselves, leading to dozens of different software programs in use across the community. This leads to inconsistent data handling, and a lack of provenance tracking increases the overall uncertainty of these observations.

The Ocean Thematic Centre (OTC) of the pan-European Research Infrastructure Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is developing online software to provide data reduction and QC tools for anyone measuring surface ocean CO₂. Scientists submit the raw data from their instruments, which will be processed to calculate surface fCO₂ using a fully open source set of algorithms based upon internationally agreed and defined criteria. Automatic QC tools will identify basic issues (out-of-range data, outliers etc.), and flag them for verification by the scientist. Plotting and mapping tools will allow detailed inspection of the data to locate further potential issues. Each data record will be assigned a quality flag. All flags from both automatic and manual QC will be recorded to ensure reproducibility. The QCed data can be exported in several formats and/or submitted directly to central data archives such as the ICOS Carbon Portal or SOCAT. Metadata will be integrated using internationally approved protocols and schemas which are currently under development.

Unified tools like QuinCe will streamline data processing, helping to meet increasing demands for up-to-date climate data. Planned features such as accepting near real time data streams transmitted directly from the instruments themselves and more sophisticated automatic QC checks will allow even greater time savings. Data centres will be assured that data submitted via QuinCe will have complete records of both the automatic and manual QC providing complete transparency and improved stewardship.