An Automated Quality Assessment and Control Algorithm for Surface Radiation Measurements

Abstract

We present an automated algorithm for testing surface broadband radiation measurements to detect erroneous data. The methodology has been developed using data from the US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program. The testing includes physically possible limits as determined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Baseline Surface Radiation Network, as well as user configurable limits based on climatological analysis of data collected at the measurement site. The algorithm can be run in near real time, or more typically on a daily basis. Additionally, longer monthly or yearly runs can be used to assess more subtle tendencies and problems in the data through evaluation of daily summaries of quality flagging.