[Im4ca-wp1.beta] IM4CA Romania Campaing 2026 Finalsied metadata and dataformat for in-situ measurements

[Sara.Defratyka]

Hello everyone, 

finally I managed to finalise the template of metadata and dataformat. Following it by everyone will facilitate submitting IM4CA data to ICOS Carbon Portal, but also calculating emissions rates and final upscaling. On the previous, post-campaing meeting for ground teams, we came to the conclusion that ideal, one team is responsible for the quanitifcation, using well-prepared data from the ground teams. 

Some clarifications: 
You can find the template in the attachment, as a txt file: "IM4CA_Romania_Campaing_in_situ_metadata_data_format". 
The file name convention is: yyyy-mm-dd-ROMxxxx-seq-team.csv (details in .txt file) 
Overall, it should be 1 csv file per site and sequence, merged in a zip file. Separate zip files should be made for car, drone and tall tower measurements. This csv file should include all mentioned metadata in the template plus a dataframe. Note # is used as a comment, ; as a column separation and . for decimal places. 
Note also, that based on ICOS CP suggestion, dataformat is YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ and the data should be in UTC time. 
We need to decide the common nomenclature for site type details (e.g., pumpjack, gas well, water tank). 
System diagnostic are omitted to facilate following the data. It's also up to invidiual teams to use their instrument system dignostic to flag data. The method of flagging and correcting/calibrating data should be also desribed in the metadata. 
Please, especially from the drone mass balance perspective, let me know if some crucial variables are missing (maybe some more information about the highet above the ground)? 
We should be able to send around an examples datafile from LSCE next week, so it should help to follow the template. 

Deadline 
First datafiles should be created until end of this month, for the ICOS CP submission. Then, ideally each team prepars the set of their .csv until September, for further quantifications and upscaling. 

Submission to ICOS CP 
We will ask ICOS CP for the data embargo, potentially until end of the project. In this case, we will have enough time to work on our data before they come publicly available. However, we still need to submit data to ICOS CP relatively quickly, to prove to EU that data publication chain is established. 
For the submission to the ICOS CP, data should go through at list first quality control. Then, later in the project, new data versions can be added as well. 
The first submission, of some example data should be done until end of this month. It should be separate submissions of all csv files merged into indvidual zip folders for drone, cars and tall tower measurements (eg., one zip folder per measurement platform), with added a spreadsheet "spatiotemp_uploadmeta_im4ca-wp1_DRAFT". Also, some metadata report should be included there. Hopefully, this report can be made by extracting information from Deliverable 1.1. 

Additionla needed actions 
1) Please also fill the spreadsheet of visited sites. It is crucial we have the informations about: site name, type, details, lat, long, sniffing, done quantification and if CH4 emissions was observed. Having this data, we are able to make a quick statistic now and how may sites were visited. It will also allow to estiamte how long it will take to calcualte emission rate from all visited sites. You can find the individual spreadsheets for each team here: 
[ https://vu.data.surf.nl/s/emwBToabB7H94n7?dir=/Data/Romania%20campaign/OVERVIEW%20Field_collected_data | https://vu.data.surf.nl/s/emwBToabB7H94n7?dir=/Data/Romania%20campaign/OVERVIEW%20Field_collected_data ] 

2) For now, I have details of the main data provider per team. Could I also ask you to send a details of each person involved in data colelction and processing? In this case they can be listed as contirbutors during ICOS CP submission. Please send to me: name, e-mail and ORCID ID of all contributors. 

Remote data: 
This template is only for in-situ measurements. As discussed, we will work on template of netcdf file for remote data separately. In the meantime, you can test those two tool to check the compatibility of your already existing files: 


[ https://mcc.podaac.earthdatacloud.nasa.gov/ | https://mcc.podaac.earthdatacloud.nasa.gov/ ] 


[ https://compliance.ioos.us/index.html | https://compliance.ioos.us/index.html ] 


I hope you survived until end of this enormous email! 
Take care duirng heatwaves! 
Best, 

-- 
Dr Sara Defratyka 
orcid.org/0000-0002-9488-4518 
LSCE - UVSQ 
Bât 714 P1115 
Orme des Merisiers 
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette 
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