MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
In Situ TAC now exposes rich and FAIR data and metadata 
in NetCDF files, following guidelines and vocabularies 
maintained by SeaDataNet. Vocabularies are crucial for 
products homogeneity and consist of: 
vocabulary for physical parameters linked to 
SeaDataNet PO9/P01 parameters, P06 units, 
unambiguous data provider Identification with 
European Directory of Marine Organisations codes, 
REP and NRT data information, 
Exhaustive data type Identification, 
„Improved sea level metadata from tide gauges 
following EuroGOOS Tide Gauges Task Team 
recommendations. 
1.1.3 Support to users 
During the past six years In Situ TAC has invested itself in a 
set of activities aiming to enhance the in situ products 
visibility and, in turn, user engagement. The main activities 
are: 
„Interface for in Situ data discovery, sub setting 
and visualisation. Initially released in 2017 and in 
continuous improvement/extension since then, this 
dashboard is now showcased as Advanced Tool for 
visualization in Copernicus Marine Service main 
site. Also, the In Situ dedicated site with shortcuts to 
several resources (documentation, news, services, 
training, partners, contact...) is useful for users, 
display of KPlIs for checking and monitoring in situ 
NRT and REP data in terms of avallability, delay. 
Juality, quantity, etc, 
guided Jupyter Notebook tutorials with code snippets 
in python illustrating how to find, subset, download 
and plot programmatically In situ products in the 
catalogue, 
participation as experts to 7 regional workshops per 
vear. Since the remote attendance is enabled, the 
audience has skyrocketed by 325%. 
Over the 6-year period, the number of regular users of in 
situ NRT products increased from less than 20 to nearly 
300 a-day. Since the dashboard, KPIls and web release 
(September 2017) and the reinforcement of contributions 
to trainina workshops (Januarv 2019). the number of dailv 
regular users has doubled and continues to increase. 
1.1.4 Enhancing the Quality 
Thanks to the collaborative work, feedback mechanisms 
within the Product Quality Working Group (PQWG), improvec 
methodology and development of new user-oriented metrics, 
the In Situ TAC has been able to enhance the product quality. 
In 2016, the quality of wave data at In Situ TAC was 
improved through development and Implementation of 
specific NRT Quality Control (QC) procedures. 
Since 2019, sea level data have been assessed by an 
automatic QC software, based on GLOSS procedures and 
mplemented at In Situ TAC IBI (Iberia, Biscay and Ireland) 
and MED (Mediterranean) regions. 
Concerning temperature and salinity observations, the 
MinMax method (Gourrion et al., 2020), initially developed 
for delayed-time QC, has been adapted to NRT production 
constraints and implemented operationally at In Situ TAC 
‘or Argo observations since January 2019. The method has 
Jjemonstrated its ability to improve the early detection of 
Argo platforms affected by fast positive salinity drift, a 
major issue since 2018. Reference fields have been 
Jpdated operationally in February 2020 and the method 
will continue to be applied to a larger set of platform types. 
Since 2020, new QC procedures for Oxygen and BGC data 
have been developed and implemented. For the carbon 
NRT product, since the release of the automatic QC 
software QuinCe in 2018, procedures have been refined to 
improve reliability and to detect a wider variety of issues 
across multiple input sensors. 
The validation of drifter’s velocity and temperature 
measurements relies on provider (AOML (REP) and Meteo- 
France (NRT)) quality control. The wind slippage correction 
delivered in REP drifter product is compared to geostrophic 
current derived from altimetry. For research vessel REP 
ADCP observations, each cruise is processed, quality 
zontrolled and visually inspected. For NRT velocities from 
Argo floats, Argo trajectory files are quality controlled 
according to "Argo quality control manual for CTD_and 
trajectory data”. The EU High Frequency Radar (HFR) Node 
aversees the validity of HFR data files and the NRT QC in 
compliance with the EU common Standard for HFR surface 
zurrent data and metadata. For the quality of the REP 
products, a comprehensive examination of historical data 
series available and of the systems’ performance has been 
astablished in collaboration with data providers, with 
dedicated quality reports. 
As an additional activity, In Situ TAC initialised in 2020 an 
action to review, through a deep analysis, applied NRT QC 
procedures to evaluate and homogenise methodologies. Al 
reviewed and improved In Situ TAC NRT QC documentations 
are available at the In Situ TAC dedicated site.