Extended Abstract (352K)9.9
A new automated and interactive system for solar radiation data processing and quality control
Tara H. Sopoco, MSC, Downsview, ON, Canada; and L. D. Boudreau and M. Armstrong
The new processing and quality control tool for solar radiation data developed by the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) has resulted in a modern system that takes advantage of current research and technology for i) a more efficient and automatic processing system, and ii) an Internet-based interactive application. The new solar radiation system replaces a manually-intensive process developed in the late 1980’s, running on a computer platform and operating system no longer supported. A new monitoring data management framework encourages real-time data transfer, quality assurance, quality control and archiving. This initiative comes at a time when the solar radiation network is being overhauled and modernized. By the end of 2005, the MSC will have completed phasing in a new automatic network with approximately the same number of stations (fifty), but reducing measurements to only global radiation at all but a few stations. The data transfer will be electronic, in near real-time, and new procedures will reduce the reliance on human data handling. Automatic processing and quality control is a major component of the new system, with data ingest, conversions, offsets, flagging, corrections of small problems, etc. being done automatically. Analysis of the system and data, however, revealed that for high resolution solar radiation data, interactive quality control is essential to maintaining data quality. Interactive quality control is now more effectively targeted using error reports and visual flagging from new quality assurance algorithms. It uses Cold Fusion MX with Flash MX for the user interface and a Java back-end. Daily plots of the data are available via the MSC Intranet to monitoring site maintainers so they can monitor performance of their stations and instruments. Thumbnail graphs give weekly or monthly overviews. Data are now moved to the archive daily without human intervention, and a new flagging system allows more detailed information about the data quality and processing. The development of the new automated system for processing and quality controlling solar radiation data ensures data is more readily accessible to clients and improves the quality of the measurements since errors due to maintenance issues are detected and corrected on the order of days, rather than weeks or months.
Session 9, Internet Applications, Web Portals and Cyberinfrastructure Part II (ROOM 6B)
Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Room 6B
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