Quality information documents for Near Real Time IN SITU products: INSITU_GLO_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_030; INSITU_ARC_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_031; INSITU_BAL_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_032; INSITU_IBI_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_033; INSITU_BS_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_034; INSITU_MED_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_035; INSITU_NWS__NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_036 Issue: 1.7.

Abstract

The accuracy of the in situ observation depends of the platforms and sensors that have been used to acquire them (see next §I.3). All observations are aggregated by the In Situ Thematic center and provided to users together with metadata information on the platforms that were used to perform the observations. In near real time (within a few hours, maximum one week from acquisition) the quality of the observation are tested using automatic procedures and flags (see Table ) are positioned to inform the users of the level of confidence attached to the observations. The In Situ TAC relies on observing systems maintained by institutes that are not part of the In Situ TAC and CMEMS project is not contributing to the maintenance and setting up of the observing systems it uses. - The variety of platforms available to monitor the status of the ocean is very diverse within the different regions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) were developed to provide an overview of the system status. - In some regions the number of available platforms is on a critical low level to provide an adequate representative overall view of the state of the ocean o Specifically, the Black Sea observing network lacks platforms that monitor the region o Within the Arctic most of the data is obtained by regular vessel cruises or dedicated scientific expeditions. The availability of data from these scientific expeditions is often delayed so they are not available for the RT data stream which results that the data is not available for data assimilation of the operational models. - The percentage of data flagged as ‘good data’ is varying from region to region. Within the Black Sea and in the Arctic region critical low numbers of available observations impacting the provision of a good and representative real time data product is detected within the temporal frame of the project. The same counts for the availability of observations on the Shelves within the IBI and for the deep areas within the Mediterranean Sea. The sustainability of the Global Ocean network is still not guaranteed and highly relies of project funds. In all the regions biogeochemical data are relatively scarcely available.