Quality Assurance / Quality Control

The aim of quality assurance is to provide data with sufficiently good and known quality. This page gives an overview of the quality assurance activities at CCC. Part of the information given is collected from participating laboratories and national QA managers.

EMEP Manual for sampling and chemical analysis (EMEP, 1996)
Data Quality Objectives (DQO)
An introduction to the quality assessment of precipitation chemistry
Training courses are held occasionally at NILU or in cooperation with other programmes/projects
Flagging data
- List of flags currently used in the EMEP data base
- Flagging precipitation results with poor ion balance, background document
  - Ion balance plots: 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 (pdf), 2005, 2006
- QA flag, flagging data using results from field- and lab intercomparison, (field flags and lab flags)
  - field flags for historical data of SO₂ and SO₄ in air (MS word, 544 KB)
  - field and lab flag for historical data of NO₂ (text file)
  - flag for the
    - 2002 data, precipitation and air
    - 2003 data, precipitation and air
    - 2004 data, precipitation and air
    - 2005 data, precipitation and air
    - 2006 data, precipitation and air
Results from laboratory intercomparison
- Lab improvements for main components throughout the nineties.
- Random (excel file, 98 KB) and systematic (excel file, 169 KB) error in lab intercomparison from 1977 to 2001.
- Main components in air and precipitation::
  - 2002: random and systematic error
  - 2003: random and systematic error
  - 2004: random and systematic error
  - 2005: random and systematic error
  - 2006: random and systematic error
- Heavy metals, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
- POP intercomparison. 2 rounds of comparisons in 2000-2002; main results: or the report (pdf, 5.2MB)
- EC/OC intercomparioson - performed by JRC, Ispra (EUSAAR project), report (pdf, 0.1 MB)
- Annual reports on the intercomparisons for main components and for heavy metals can be downloaded here.
Results from field intercomparison
- Main components in air and particles (SO₂ , SO₄^2-, NO₂, HNO₃ +NO₃^-),
- Main components in precipitation
- VOC (carbonyls at Donon, hydrocarbons at Waldhof)
- Hg in air and precipitation (UBA report, Word File)
Audit forms
- Precipitation sampling and Chemical analysis: GAW QA/QC report (MS word, 61K)
- Determination of ozone: EMPA-WCC report (MS word, 97K )
- Determination of sulphur and nitrogen compounds in air with impregnated filters: EMEP-CCC Note (MS word, 38K)
Ozone measurements
- Overview of the routines for calibration and maintenance (excel file, 110 KB)
Detection limits and precision, representative for the 2002 data (MS Mord, 633 KB), 2004 data ( MS Mord, 675 KB), 2005 data ( MS Mord, 2.8 MB), 2006 data ( MS Mord, 1 MB)
Data quality reports can be downloaded for the years: 1998 (pdf, 1.1MB) 1999 (pdf, 1.0MB) 2000 (pdf, 6.6MB) 2001 (pdf, 1.4 MB) 2002 (pdf, 2.7 MB), 2003 (pdf, 1 MB), 2004 (pdf, 1 MB), 2005 (pdf, 1 MB), 2006 (pdf, 1 MB)

Last updated: December, 2008 by Wenche Aas