Instrumental quality control on raw data collected by automatic weather stations of a new ground-based measurement network in Switzerland

Among its duties, MeteoSwiss is responsible for the operation and maintenance of a meteorological and climatological network guaranteeing regular measurements on the entire Swiss territory. The ground-based network is currently being renewed by MeteoSwiss, under the project SwissMetNet. With this project, MeteoSwiss will have a state-of-the art unified network, composed of 130 automatic weather stations, measuring ca. 20 meteorological parameters and 20 housekeeping values.

Instrumental quality control performed on the raw data (meteorological and housekeeping parameters) is assured at two levels. The first level performs plausibility tests online (real-time control), and delivers instantaneous alarms. The second level is a quality control performed on an operational way each night over the entire network, using the measured data from the past 90 days. The aim of this control is to detect drifting values due to instrumental problems, which are not seen by the first level control. This paper focuses on the development and operational implementation of this second quality control on raw data within SwissMetNet.