Overview of Automated QA - August 1995

Below is an overview by Mark Shafer of the August 1995 Oklahoma Mesonet 
automated quality assurance runs.

PROBLEM SITES:
--------------

KETC  TS05      Suspect flags from the 1st - 11th; no flag in badparm.

KETC  TB05      Failed range check often from the 8th - 31st.  A trouble-
                ticket had been issued on July 1, 1995 and was resolved
                on August 6.  However, the problem apparently persisted.
                I am not sure of the cause.

KING  TS30      Suspect and failure flags the entire month.  Flagged as
                warning on October 2.

KING  TS10      Large spatial scores from the 5th - 7th.  Flagged as 
                warning on September 16.

SALL  SRAD      Dropped below -1 at night from the 1st - 25th.  Apparently
                replaced on August 25.

HOLL  TS30      Failures in range test from the 3rd - 5th.  No flag in
                badparm.

RING  PRES      Several pressure spikes during the month (5th, 12th, 17th,
                20th).  This is confusing because it is the only Mesonet
                site which has repeatedly shown these patterns.  It could
                be an interesting study :-)  The typical pattern of a
                pressure spike will show up in the .qbd file as:
                RING PRES     1     0     1     0
                The 1 failure is from failing both the step and spatial
                tests.  On the way back down, it fails the step, but
                passes the spatial which leaves a suspect flag (instead
                of a warning). 

LEAF            Rather than listing them separately, it appears that
                a number of sites had persistent problems.  The
                date first noticed is indicated in parentheses.
                BESS (1st), BOWL (1st), KETC (1st), ALTU (4th),
                LAHO (7th), GOOD (15th), CLAY (24th), IDAB (24th)

• -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)