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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Ocean Observation
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1496409
This article is part of the Research Topic Demonstrating Observation Impacts for the Ocean and Coupled Prediction View all 15 articles

Evaluation of the effects of Argo data quality control on global ocean data assimilation systems

Provisionally accepted
Ichiro Ishikawa Ichiro Ishikawa 1*Yosuke Fujii Yosuke Fujii 1Eric De Boisseson Eric De Boisseson 2Yiguo Wang Yiguo Wang 3,4Hao Zuo Hao Zuo 2
  • 1 Department of Atmosphere, Ocean and Earth System Modeling Research, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Tsukuba, Japan
  • 2 Research Department, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, United Kingdom
  • 3 Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
  • 4 Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A series of observing system experiments (OSEs) were conducted in order to evaluate the effects of Argo data quality control (QC), by using the three global ocean data assimilation systems. During the experimental period between 2015 and 2020, some Argo floats are affected by the abrupt salinity drifts, which caused spurious increasing trend of the global mean salinity in the reanalyses using the observations with only real-time QC applied. The spurious trend is mitigated by applying the gray list provided by the Argo Global Data Assembly Centres (GDAC), and further reduced by assimilating the delayed-mode Argo data of the Argo GDAC instead of the real-time Argo data. These impacts of the Argo QC are generally consistent among the three ocean data assimilation systems. Further investigations in the JMA's system show that errors in the analyzed salinity with respect to the delayed-mode Argo data are smaller in the OSE with more rigorous QC, and the spatiotemporal variations in the sea-surface dynamic height are reproduced better. Additionally, QC impacts on the analyzed temperatures are shown not to directly reflect the difference in temperature observations among OSEs, and may be affected by difference in the salinity observations among OSEs through the cross-covariance relationship in the data-assimilation systems.

    Keywords: Global ocean circulation, Ocean observation, data assimilation, Numerical modeling, Argo floats

    Received: 14 Sep 2024; Accepted: 13 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ishikawa, Fujii, De Boisseson, Wang and Zuo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ichiro Ishikawa, Department of Atmosphere, Ocean and Earth System Modeling Research, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Tsukuba, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.