Wolter, K., S. J. Lubker, and S. D. Woodruff, 2003: Quality control in recent and pending COADS Releases. In Advances in the Applications of Marine Climatology, WMO/TD-No. 1081 (JCOMM Technical Report No. 13), WMO, 116-123.
In the context of the long-term monitoring of global climate, the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) offers the most complete marine surface data collection (1784-1997) currently available for global climate research. Its long duration and the international nature of its data sources necessitate particularly careful quality control (QC) measures. The final portion of COADS QC -- flagging statistical outliers and removing them from the computation of areal averages -- is referred to as 'trimming'. Based on a review of the trimming impacts of COADS Release 1 (1854-1979), recent COADS Releases 1a (1980-97), 1b (1950-79) and 1c (1784-1949) were modified to allow for a better representation of large-scale climate anomalies such as major ENSO events. This paper summarizes these changes in COADS QC, and discusses related trimming modifications for near-real-time products and future COADS Releases.