Quality of temperature and salinity data from Argo profiling floats in the Bay of Bengal

Abstract

<span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family: " times="" new="" roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";mso-bidi-font-family:="" mangal;mso-ansi-language:en-gb;mso-fareast-language:zh-cn;mso-bidi-language:="" hi"="" lang="EN-GB">In the <span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:" times="" new="" roman";="" mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";mso-bidi-font-family:mangal;="" mso-ansi-language:en-us;mso-fareast-language:zh-cn;mso-bidi-language:hi"="" lang="EN-US">present study, temperature and salinity from APEX -<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Argo floats with reported SPB</i> (Argo-SPB) and salinity from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">normal floats without any reported SPB</i> (Argo-N) in the BoB have been subjected to quality check (QC). Method used for QC depends on time-space de-correlation scales (TSD-scales) of temperature and salinity in the BoB at selected potential temperature (θ) surface (10 ^oC). High quality shipboard CTD observations in the BoB have been used to identify TSD-scales of temperature and salinity. Observed TSD scales for salinity (temperature) at θ surface of 10 ^oC are 5 days and 60 km (8 days and 80 km). QC has been performed on matchups between Argo and shipboard CTD observations falling within the identified TSD- scales. QC on Argo-SPB could not identify any significant systematic bias/error, except for a single profile (cycle No. 48) of float-4900675. In the case of Argo-N, significant error is found in most of the salinity profiles from the float-2900268.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>