Quality Control for Meteorological Data Collected by University of South Alabama Mesonet Weather Stations

• Activity Number: 428
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Madhuri S. Mulekar*+ and Sytske Kimball
• Companies: University of South Alabama and University of South Alabama
• Keywords: Quality control checks ; Weather data ; Range test ; Errors

Abstract

In this project various quality control techniques are applied to weather data. The range test, temporal-, internal- and spatial consistency tests are discussed. In 2006 the University of South Alabama (USA) began the installation of a network of weather stations with the goal of providing near-real time data to forecasters and archived data to researchers. By mid-2010 26 Mesonet stations were functioning along the north-central Gulf of Mexico coast. These stations automatically record data every minute on 18 different variables ranging from soil temperature to wind speed. Because of the large amounts of data, the implementation of automated quality control methods has become a necessity to produce reliable data. Although periodic manual intervention will still be required, the goal is to automate quality control procedures as much as possible.