SCOR Working Group 148

International Quality Controlled Ocean Database: Subsurface temperature profiles (IQuOD)

Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT) autolauncher (from http://www- hrx.ucsd.edu/pics/Autolauncher.jpg). XBTs are used on research and commercial vessels to collect profiles of ocean temperature data.
Chair(s)
Catia Domingues (Australia) and Simon Good (UK) - formerly Matt Palmer (UK)
Other Full Members
TVS Udaya Bhaskar (India), Tim Boyer (USA), Marcela Charo (Argentina), Christine Coatanoan (France), Rebecca Cowley (Australia), Viktor Gouretski (Germany), and Shoichi Kizu (Japan)
Associate Members
Guilherme Castelao (USA), Lijing Cheng (China-Beijing), Mauro Cirano (Brazil), Alexander Vorontsov (Russia), Francis Bringas Gutierrez (USA), Katherine Hutchinson (South Africa), Sergio Larios (Mexico), Alison Macdonald (USA), and Toru Suzuki (Japan)
Reporter
Hans van Haren
Terms of Reference
  1. To develop, implement and document algorithms for assignment of “intelligent” metadata – i.e. an informed guess as to likely values for missing information – for temperature profiles where crucial metadata is missing.

  2. To evaluate and document the most effective combination of automated quality control (AutoQC) procedures for temperature profile observations. International collaboration will be required for the design and coordination of benchmarking experiments using high-quality reference datasets.

  3. To establish and implement a set of optimal automated quality control procedures, by reaching international community consensus and using the knowledge gained in the benchmarking tests from ToR-2 (above); to produce and publish a reference guide for best practices in automated quality control of ocean temperature profiles; and to develop and freely distribute an open-source quality control software toolkit to promote wide and rapid adoption of best practices by the oceanographic community.

  4. To examine and document the feasibility of machine learning and other novel computational methods for enhanced quality control, to potentially minimize labor costs associated with human expert quality-control procedures.

  5. To develop, implement and document internationally agreed best practice methods for assignment of uncertainty estimates to each temperature observation.

  6. To freely disseminate (interim) versions of the IQuOD global temperature profile database (and added-value products) as it evolves over the next 3 years, in user-friendly file formats.

  7. To share knowledge and transfer skills in instrumentation, regional oceanography, quality control procedures and data stewardship with international scientists in both developed and developing nations.

Approved
December 2015
Financial Sponsors
SCOR, NSF
Meetings
  1. 3-7 October 2016 in Tokyo, Japan

  2. 16-18 April 2018 in Ostende, Belgium

  3. 28 October–1 November 2019 in Brest, France

  4. October 2020 (online)

  5. November 2020 (online)

  6. October 2021 (online)

  7. December 2021 (online)

  8. March 2022 (online)

  9. May 2022 (online)

  10. June 2022 (online)

  11. July 2023 in Potsdam, Germany

Group Website
http://iquod.github.io/
Publications