The Kvalobs Open Source Software (kvoss) Mission Statement

Kvoss shall be the main real-time Quality Control system for meteorological data (KVALOBS), providing tools for manual interaction on data quality by a Human Quality Control system (HQC). Advanced automatic QC-methods in non-real-time (QC2) shall provide spatial, climatological and statistical checks to increase the confidence of data quality after real time checks (QC1).

Kvoss shall be well suited for QC on observed and measured time series in meteorology, both in real- and non-real-time, anywhere in the world. As a real-time system KVALOBS shall handle huge amounts of data within 3 minutes to fit input requirements for weather forecast production.

Standard for quality information

The resulting quality flags use the Nordic National Weather Service standard for quality information, designed for transformation to the WMO BUFR-format for data exchange.

License, origin of software and implementations

The software is free and licensed as GPL. Kvoss rises from the cooperation on QC-tools between Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) and Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) and is linked to the NORDKLIM program for the Nordic countries http://www.smhi.se/hfa_coord/nordklim/. The system is used in operational production at met.no, and will be run at SMHI in 2008.