Develop a plan for GDAC QC

[kbailey-noaa]

What can be improved? What is missing?

FY24 GDAC SOW:
Per IOOS Certification requirements, data served via the GDAC must be quality controlled, whether by routines applied by the provider or by the GDAC. The GDAC must apply QARTOD to variables that have existing QARTOD manuals (e.g. Manual for QC of Glider Temperature and Salinity Data). Flags must be published in the data files following IOOS Metadata standards (ioos.github.io).

The GDAC Team shall develop a plan for full implementation of QC in the GDAC using the following tiered approach:
Near-term: implement or repair existing Required and Strongly Recommended QARTOD tests, using global thresholds for all GDAC data, and publish aggregate QC flags (qc_agg).
Mid-term: Use QARTOD manuals and standards to understand and identify the potential for improvements to existing tests (e.g. regional refinement of thresholds, additional real-time tests, etc).
Long-term: Engage a scientific working group, possibly under UG2, to investigate the potential for delayed-mode quality control and/or to gain feedback on additional QC considerations.

1. Document an implementation plan that addresses the above 3 aspects of QC, which includes what we're doing now, gaps that remain, and what we intend to do, for both real-time and delayed mode datasets. Consider this plan to be a proposal that we'd run by the community.

2. Identify a forum to document this plan. I highly discourage Word documents, since those aren't interactive. Options are the GitHub wiki (I can activate this), some type of Slack feature (?), the GitHub Discussions option...something else?