Real-time quality control practices on a cabled ocean observatory: A 10 year case study in Saanich Inlet, BC

Timely identification and minimization of data quality issues in long-term datasets across multiple instrument deployments at a single site pose a fundamental challenge to cabled ocean observatory operations. Ocean Network Canada (ONC) has developed extensive real-time Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) methodologies, including both automated and manual techniques and workflow. ONC's QA/QC approach was developed with the key objectives of maintaining consistency both within a single dataset and simultaneously among a collection of datasets at each site. This paper highlights a case study of ONC's longest deployment site in Saanich Inlet, BC, Canada which has been continuously instrumented from 2006 through 2016. We focus on real-time QA/QC practices applied to conductivity-temperature depth (CTD) instruments. The methodologies and results presented in this paper have been generalized to other ONC observatory sites, and can serve as a practical guide to others developing real-time QA/QC systems for long-term cabled observatory deployments of CTD instruments.