Data Quality Flag Terms

DQ flag describes measures taken to clean and validate the data, as well as characterize the residual data noise. It is distinct from another data qualifier used in the specification of Acquisition and Computation called Data Level that does not describe the data quality but rather characterizes the amount of data processing applied to the measurements to obtain higher level data products (in terms of the observed properties). Commonly, Data Level 1 refers to observed properties of the instrument probing signal while Data Level 2 corresponds to the derived geophysical properties of the Feature of Interest.