Abstract
The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project has deployed 194 profiling floats equipped with biogeochemical (BGC) sensors, making it one of the largest contributors to global BGC-Argo. Post-deployment quality control (QC) of float-based oxygen, nitrate, and pH data is a crucial step in the processing and dissemination of such data, as in situ chemical sensors remain in early stages of development. In situ calibration of chemical sensors on profiling floats using atmospheric reanalysis and empirical algorithms can bring accuracy to within 3 μmol O2 kg–1, 0.5 μmol NO3– kg–1, and 0.007 pH units. Routine QC efforts utilizing these methods can be conducted manually through visual inspection of data to assess sensor drifts and offsets, but more automated processes are preferred to support the growing number of BGC floats and reduce subjectivity among delayed-mode operators. Here we present a methodology and accompanying software designed to easily visualize float data against select reference datasets and assess QC adjustments within a quantitative framework. The software is intended for global use and has been used successfully in the post-deployment calibration and QC of over 250 BGC floats, including all floats within the SOCCOM array. Results from validation of the proposed methodology are also presented which help to verify the quality of the data adjustments through time.
Highlights
The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project has finished its sixth year reaching a total of 194 biogeochemical (BGC)-Argo profiling floats deployed throughout the Southern Ocean (Figure 1)
Nitrate and pH Adjustments Applied to SOCCOM Float Data
As described in section “Adjustment of Nitrate and pH Data,” the coefficients to the linear fits of each segmented anomaly series are included within a single float-specific correction matrix that is used in the data adjustment process
Summary
The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project has finished its sixth year reaching a total of 194 biogeochemical (BGC)-Argo profiling floats deployed throughout the Southern Ocean (Figure 1). Due to the success of the current program, the SOCCOM project has been renewed for an additional 4 years, with the goal of deploying 120 more BGC profiling floats south of 30◦S. The NSF has funded the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry (GO-BGC) Array, which will extend the current BGCArgo program considerably through the deployment of an additional 500 floats throughout the global ocean. Emerging data from floats within the SOCCOM array have already expanded our understanding of the Southern Ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle and have improved the capability of ocean models to predict future change (Verdy and Mazloff, 2017; Gray et al, 2018; Russell et al, 2018; Williams et al, 2018; Bushinsky et al, 2019a; Swart et al, 2019).
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