Overview of Automated QA - October 1995

Below is a review by Mark Shafer of the automated quality assurance
for the October 1995 Oklahoma Mesonet data:
PROBLEM SITES:
--------------

ALTU LEAF       A number of failures from the 20th - 29th.  There was no
                trouble-ticket, and it seems to have corrected itself
                (or been fixed in-field by a technician).

CLAY LEAF       Definitely bad the entire month.  Numerous failures, but
                not discovered until April 22.                          

GOOD LEAF       Numerous failures from October 5 - November 1.  No trouble
                ticket issued, but looks good after November 1.

BYAR TB05       Suspect and Warning flags from the 1st through 12th.  No
                record of a trouble-ticket, but I suspect a bias was noted
                and the sensor replaced on the 12th.

SULP TB10       Appears biased from the 2nd through 12th.  It was eventually
                flagged in our badparm record on March 22.  Again, it might
                have been corrected, but then went bad again later.

Also, the usual problems of inversions persisted, notably at MEDI, CHEY,
and COOK (TAIR and RELH received a number of suspect flags).  KING TAIR
and TA9M were also flagged bad (10 readings) on the 24th ... I think this
was caused by a strong and very shallow inversion (> 10 deg C between
the 1.5 and 9 m sensors).  It is the only case I have seen yet where
the like-instrument provided a false alert.

Users of the data should obtain copies of the detailed quality 
assurance files for these data.

• -180.0 - +180.0(alt)
• accumulated rainfall since 00GMT except at 00 GMT, the number given is the total
  accumulation for the past 24 hours(prec_amt)
• vector average wind magnitude(wvec_10m)
• Time offset from base_time(time_offset)
• Retrieved pressure profile(pres)
• standard deviation of wind speed(wspd_sigma)
• average wind run (arithmetic average speed) at 10m(wspd_10m)
• vector average of wind direction measured at 10m(wdir_10m)
• air temperature at 1.5m(tdry_1_5m)
• base time in epoch(base_time)
• lon(lon)
• maximum 3-second wind speed within the 5-minute averaging period(wspd_max)
• average wind speed at 2m(wspd_2m)
• Relative Humidity (hybrid-b grid)(rh)
• air temperature at 9m(tdry_9m)
• solar radiation(srad)
• standard deviation of wind direction(wdir_sigma)
• North Latitude(lat)

• leaf wetness index, measurement of dew ranging from 0 (dry) to 100(wet)(leaf_ind)
• -180.0 - +180.0(alt)
• soil temperature at 5 cm beneath natural sod cover(tsoil5)
• 10 cm soil temp(tsoil10)
• soil temperature at 5 cm beneath bare soil(tbare5)
• Average battery voltage(vbat)
• base time in epoch(base_time)
• lon(lon)
• soil temperature at 10cm beneath bare soil(tbare10)
• soil temperature at 30 cm beneath bare soil(tbare30)
• Time offset from base_time(time_offset)
• North Latitude(lat)