World Meteorological Organization

Core activities:
● Develop common quality assurance principles and terminology between thematic GAW groups;
● Advise GAW station operators on the implementation of the quality assurance protocols, Standard Operating Procedures and measurement guidelines;
● Coordinate interactions, monitor the activities and reporting of the GAW Central Facilities;
● Promote the development and use of unified tools for the quality control at the stations;
● Improve data quality by producing documents to help meeting quality assurance requirements, encouraging the stations participating in the programme to utilize GAW Central Facilities to ensure a consistent traceability chain;
● Promote and coordinate intercomparison exercises, disseminate comparison reports, develop quality flagging based on the results of the instruments’ performance;
● Promote the establishment of the missing element of the quality assurance and control system in GAW with particular focus on establishing new Regional Calibration Centres;
● In cooperation with thematic SAGs and ET-ACDM develop and maintain the Standard Operating Procedures and measurement guidelines for instruments, data processing and submission for observations made under GAW, and update the respective sections of the CIMO Guide;
● Guide the implementation of measurement approaches that ensure internal consistency (compatibility) of data contributed by partners through the use of common standard scales maintained by the Central Calibration Laboratories, participation in international comparisons and station audits organized by World Calibration Centres, and utilization of practices recommended by the expert measurement community;
● Survey available and emerging measurement techniques and support the development of standard operating procedures for these in cooperation with the respective SAGs.

Interface with SAGs
● In cooperation with thematic SAGs develop and keep updated the Standard Operating Procedures and measurement guidelines;
● Assist SAGs in developing measurement guidelines for the emerging measurement techniques or new chemical variables;
● Work closely with thematic SAGs on the development of the harmonized and automated quality assurance and control tools.
Interface with Expert Teams
● Assist ET- ACDM in developing and maintaining data processing and submission protocols and guidelines to ensure inclusion of the data quality flagging;
● Assist ET- ACDM in the evaluation of quality of data residing in the World Data Centres.

Interface GAW initiatives steering committees
● Advise the science-for-services initiatives on the GAW observational quality management.
Interface with WMO groups
● Interact with the respective groups under the Technical Commission on Infrastructure in relation to the quality of observations in order to harmonize and integrate atmospheric composition data quality assurance approaches with the ones in the other WMO observing components.
Interface with external users and partners
● Work closely with the research infrastructures and other research programmes and initiatives on the development of good practices for common approaches and automatic tools for quality control of atmospheric composition measurements.