Does the NOAA/National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) quality control the upper-air data archive?
Yes. Similar to NCEP, NCDC relies on a mix of objective and subjective procedures to quality control rawinsonde data before it is archived. Briefly, each sounding undergoes a series of checks to determine the plausibility of the data. If data is determined to be suspect or clearly erroneous, it is flagged as such, but is not deleted from the archive. Unlike NCEP, NCDC routinely checks RH data quality (primarily for rapid, unrealistic fluctuations in RH). As with NCEP data quality checks, NCDC data quality control is not perfect and erroneous data will not always be flagged.
