HF radar based current observation system in the German Bight

The quality control scheme, which is based on a polynomial fit to the radial components in the time domain, was validated by independent current measurements from a ship-based ADCP. The agreement beween the two sensors are for this data set is 0,13 m/s. This number has to be verified with a larger data set of ADCP measurements. This magnitude is in agreement with the validation of other HF systems (CODAR). Some locations show a strong disagreement between the HF and ADCP measuremente, correlated with an increase of the RMS error of the polynomial fit procedure. This demonstates the necessity of the quality control scheme before using the HF data, e.g. for the assimilation in a numerical model.