Argo profiling floats bring new era of in situ ocean observations

Gould, John; Roemmich, Dean; Wijffels, Susan E.; Freeland, Howard J.; Ignaszewsky, Mark; Xu, Jing; Pouliquen, Sylvie; Desaubies, Yves; Send, Uwe; Radhakrishnan, Kopillil; Takeuchi, Kensuke; Kim, Kuh; Danchenkov, Mikhail; Sutton, Philip; King, Brian; Owens, B.; Riser, S.

doi:10.1029/2004eo190002

Cited by 289 publications

(270 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…[10] Gridded fields for both S m and h m were derived from Argo float profiles of temperature, salinity, and pressure [Gould and the Argo Steering Team, 2004]. All available Argo profiles south of 30°S with a ''good'' quality flag from January 2000 to June 2008 were used, while profiles with pressure offset errors were excluded (http://www.usgodae.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of the seasonal mixed layer salinity budget in the Southern Ocean

Dong

Garzoli²,

Baringer³

2009

J. Geophys. Res.

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[1] The seasonal cycle of mixed layer salinity and its causes in the Southern Ocean are examined by combining remotely sensed and in situ observations. The domain-averaged terms of oceanic advection, diffusion, entrainment, and air-sea freshwater flux (evaporation minus precipitation) are largely consistent with the seasonal evolution of mixed layer salinity, which increases from March to October and decreases from November to February. This seasonal cycle is largely attributed to oceanic advection and entrainment; air-sea freshwater flux plays only a minimal role. Both oceanic advection-diffusion and the freshwater flux are negative throughout the year, i.e., reduce mixed layer salinity, while entrainment is positive year-round, reaching its maximum in May. The advection-diffusion term is dominated by Ekman advection. Although the spatial structure of the air-sea freshwater flux and oceanic processes are similar for the steady state, the magnitude of the freshwater flux is relatively small when compared to that of the oceanic processes. The spatial structure of the salinity tendency for each month is also well captured by the sum of the contributions from the air-sea freshwater flux, advection-diffusion, and entrainment processes. However, substantial imbalances in the salinity budget exist locally, particularly for regions with strong eddy kinetic energy and sparse in situ measurements. Sensitivity tests suggest that a proper representation of the mixed layer depth, a better freshwater flux product, and an improved surface salinity field are all important for closing the mixed layer salinity budget in the Southern Ocean.

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of the seasonal mixed layer salinity budget in the Southern Ocean

Dong

Garzoli²,

Baringer³

2009

J. Geophys. Res.

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“…However, the amount of deep-ocean data on intraseasonal time scales has increased by at least an order of magnitude with the deployment of Argo floats from 2000 onwards (Gould et al 2004;Alverson and Baker 2006). Each float drifts at a parking depth (normally at 1000 m), and then every 10 days it descends to a base level (normally at 2000 m) and then ascends to the surface, measuring a profile of temperature and salinity as it rises.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ocean temperature and salinity components of the Madden–Julian oscillation observed by Argo floats

2009

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New diagnostics of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) cycle in ocean temperature and, for the first time, salinity are presented. The MJO composites are based on 4 years of gridded Argo float data from [2003][2004][2005][2006], and extend from the surface to 1400 m depth in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans. The MJO surface salinity anomalies are consistent with precipitation minus evaporation fluxes in the Indian Ocean, and with anomalous zonal advection in the Pacific. The Argo sea surface temperature and thermocline depth anomalies are consistent with previous studies using other data sets. The near-surface density changes due to salinity are comparable to, and partially offset, those due to temperature, emphasising the importance of including salinity as well as temperature changes in mixedlayer modelling of tropical intraseasonal processes. The MJO-forced equatorial Kelvin wave that propagates along the thermocline in the Pacific extends down into the deep ocean, to at least 1400 m. Coherent, statistically significant, MJO temperature and salinity anomalies are also present in the deep Indian Ocean.

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“…An isopycnal laplacian operator is used for the lateral diffusion on the tracers and a horizontal bilaplacian operator is used for the lateral diffusion on momentum. The daily atmospheric conditions from ECMWF analyses are transformed into heat fluxes with the CLIO bulk formulae (Goosse et al 2001). The momentum fluxes (wind stresses) diagnosed by ECMWF are used directly.…”

Section: The Arpege Reanalysis: Atmospheric Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ARGO floats (Gould et al 2004) currently sample the ocean from the surface to approximately 1,500 m (most frequent maximum immersion). They measure temperature and salinity profiles and lately a small part of these profilers started to deliver biogeochemical measurements such as oxygen.…”

Section: Argo Floats and Svp Floatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A strategy for producing refined currents in the Equatorial Atlantic in the context of the search of the AF447 wreckage

Drévillon

Greiner

Paradis³

et al. 2012

Ocean Dynamics

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On the night of 1st June 2009, a Rio-Paris Air France flight (AF447) disappeared in a highly variable and poorly observed part of the western tropical Atlantic Ocean. The first debris was located 5 days after the accident. Several reverse drift computations were conducted in order to define the likely position of the wreckage. Unfortunately, the performance of the operational ocean analyses available in the region of interest ranges from 80 to 100 km of positioning error after 5 days of inverse drift computation. In preparation of the third phase of research of the wreckage at sea, a series of numerical experiments was performed at Météo-France and Mercator Océan in an attempt to better compute the surface currents in the region and for the period of the accident of the AF447 (May and June 2009). Tailored high-resolution atmosphere and ocean reanalyses were first produced respectively at Météo-France and Mercator Océan. Several nested experiments were then performed with a small and flexible ocean model limited to the region of interest. The date of the initial conditions and the type of atmospheric forcing fields were varied in order to produce a small ensemble from which information on the sensitivity to these changes could be derived. Probabilistic and statistical combinations between model and observations were tested and a solution was finally selected by means of a comparison of drift computations with independent surface drift observations.

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Argo profiling floats bring new era of in situ ocean observations

Cited by 289 publications

References 7 publications

An assessment of the seasonal mixed layer salinity budget in the Southern Ocean

An assessment of the seasonal mixed layer salinity budget in the Southern Ocean

Ocean temperature and salinity components of the Madden–Julian oscillation observed by Argo floats

A strategy for producing refined currents in the Equatorial Atlantic in the context of the search of the AF447 wreckage

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