Quality control methodology for sea temperature data, Colombian Pacific

ABSTRACT This paper describes a methodological proposal for quality control of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data consisting of four stages to the assignment of quality flags recommended by for the program for the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE); good practices of national and international references were adopted in these stages, as well as statistical, oceanographic, and climatological criteria. During the application of the methodology in SST data collected by the General Maritime Directorate in oceanographic cruises in Colombian Pacific within the framework of the programme for the Regional Study On The El Niño Phenomenon (ERFEN), were evaluated the temporal and spatial coherence of data, and outlier data were detected taking into account the influence of the El Niño / La Niña on the variability ranges of the SST, obtaining as a result that 74.09 % of the data in the study area are classified with the quality flag “good”