The historical archive of global ocean subsurface temperature contains a large proportion of poorly quality-controlled as well as biased data. As a result, efforts to analyze past ocean change and variability are confounded, as is the use of ocean data assimilation systems. Currently many data centers perform automated ‘quick and dirty QC’ – redoing the same job poorly many times around the world. There have been no previous efforts to form a clean and definitive and very much needed historical archive. No single group has the manpower and resources to do the job properly – thus international cooperation is needed. The IQuOD 6thh Workshop goals are to: 1. Obtain agreement for the AutoQC process for application to the next product version. 2. Plan for the next IQuOD product: what will it consist of and what do we need to complete to get to the next release.

The historical archive of global ocean subsurface temperature contains a large proportion of poorly quality-controlled as well as biased data. As a result, efforts to analyze past ocean change and variability are confounded, as is the use of ocean data assimilation systems. Currently many data centers perform automated ‘quick and dirty QC’ – redoing the same job poorly many times around the world. There have been no previous efforts to form a clean and definitive and very much needed historical archive. No single group has the manpower and resources to do the job properly – thus international cooperation is needed. The IQuOD 4th Workshop goals are to: Provide updates on recent IQuOD activities, particularly SCOR WG 148 and IOC/IODE; progress on the development and implementation of intelligent metadata, uncertainty estimates, duplicates flagging and the platform for AutoQC benchmarking tests; plans for next steps for the task teams; discussion on capacity building; establishing synergies between IQuOD and the XBT Science Team.

The 2nd IQuOD (International Quality-Controlled Ocean Database) meeting was held at NOAA, Silver Spring, US from 4-6 June, 2014. The project’s structure and goals were refined and clarified and it was clear that a published meeting report, a scientific report on the project and the scientific implementation plan are essential for seeking funding and in-kind support. One of the key items for the meeting was to review the automatic QC benchmarking test efforts from the previous year. Some progress was made on these tests, during the next year, the benchmarking tests will be refined, finalised and reported on. The manual QC group was given several tasks for the coming year to begin comparison and clarification of manual QC methods, including a realistic estimation of the cost of manual QC and the goal of a manual QC workshop prior to the next IQuOD general meeting. A new task group to investigate file formats, uncertainty estimation methods and flagging methods was formed and will move forward with investigating existing schemes that will suit IQuOD. Funding from all countries is limited for the present, but in-kind support, allocation of hours within existing projects and working with existing projects are workable methods for now. Support from IOC subgroups is being sought and funding schemes being further investigated.