Routine data quality control in a data centre. The example of the TOGA/WOCE Subsurface Centre

The TOGA/WOCE Subsurface Data Centre was designed to assemble all the available temperature and salinity profiles of the ocean´s upper layers in the intertropical area from 1985 according to the “Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere” international program, and from 1990 onwards in the global ocean according to the “World Ocean Circulation Experiment”. In June 1994, the database was archiving about 252000 profiles. In order to assure a high level of quality and to be in accordance with international requirements, the received data are controlled at the centre which insures time consistency, integrity and elimination of redundancy. The Centre´s software must join powerful X/motif interactive displays with a relational database system manager to insure a response time compatible with routine work on large data sets. At present, the centre receives at least 300 profiles per day and can check and disseminate them in a few days