Meteorological instrumentation performance and data quality using temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed sensors in Barrow, Alaska

Description

A recent instrument change at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility in Barrow, Alaska has provided an effective backdrop for developing a new automated method to identify issues with data collection and quality. The parameters used for the comparison include minute averages of temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed, providing real-time error assessment. The variables were inter-compared between tower levels in effort to isolate instrument failures to specific instruments. Not only were discrepancies identified, but this methodology proved useful in accurately identifying erroneous and biased data elements using statistical procedures.