MinMax Reference fields

This page centralizes different versions of the auxiliary files required to use the MinMax local range Quality Control (QC) procedure (Gourrion et al., 2020) which can be executed using the MinMax Alert Tool. Local range QC tests compare an observed parameter value to a local validity interval inferred from the variability sampled in a dedicated reference historical dataset. Traditionally, such a validity interval is estimated from first and second order moments of the local parameter distribution. In the MinMax approach, the validity interval is inferred from local minimum and maximum parameter values, avoiding making any a priori assumption on the parameter distribution shape and improving the detection robustness. The raw minimum/maximum estimates are then modified to 1) account for their intrinsic uncertainties and 2) adapt to specific operational conditions from a fully-automatic usage to the case where a QC operator is available to confirm or infirm a certain amount of detections. The auxiliary files contain such local statistical information on a discretized portion of the global ocean. Different versions of such files are available, corresponding potentially to different reference datasets, uncertainty models, operational objectives or spatial discretizations. All of these are defined in the file global attributes such as method_reference. The nomenclature and metadata of the reference field are detailed in the MinMax_referenceField_metadata.pdf.