In-situ based reanalysis of the global ocean temperature and salinity with ISAS: variability of the heat content and steric height

Type Article
Date 2016-02
Language English
Author(s) Gaillard FabienneORCID1, Reynaud ThierryORCID1, Thierry VirginieORCID1, Kolodziejczyk NicolasORCID2, von Schuckmann Karina3
Affiliation(s) 1 : IFREMER, CNRS Ifremer IRD UBO, LPO UMR 6523, F-29280 Plouzane, France.
2 : UBO, CNRS Ifremer IRD UBO, LPO UMR 6523, Plouzane, France.
3 : Mediterranean Inst Oceanog, Marseille, France.
Source Journal Of Climate (0894-8755) (Amer Meteorological Soc), 2016-02 , Vol. 29 , N. 4 , P. 1305-1323
DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0028.1
WOS© Times Cited 132
Keyword(s) Databases, Physical Meteorology and Climatology, Observational techniques and algorithms, Temperature, In situ oceanic observations, Profilers, oceanic, Data quality control, Salinity
Abstract The In Situ Analysis System (ISAS) was developed to produce gridded fields of temperature and salinity that preserve as much as possible the time and space sampling capabilities of the Argo network of profiling floats. Since the first global re-analysis performed in 2009, the system has evolved and a careful delayed mode processing of the 2002-2012 dataset has been carried out using version 6 of ISAS and updating the statistics to produce the ISAS13 analysis. This last version is now implemented as the operational analysis tool at the Coriolis data centre. The robustness of the results with respect to the system evolution is explored through global quantities of climatological interest: the Ocean Heat Content and the Steric Height. Estimates of errors consistent with the methodology are computed. This study shows that building reliable statistics on the fields is fundamental to improve the monthly estimates and to determine the absolute error bars. The new mean fields and variances deduced from the ISAS13 re-analysis and dataset show significant changes relative to the previous ISAS estimates, in particular in the southern ocean, justifying the iterative procedure. During the decade covered by Argo, the intermediate waters appear warmer and saltier in the North Atlantic and fresher in the Southern Ocean than in WOA05 long term mean. At inter-annual scale, the impact of ENSO on the Ocean Heat Content and Steric Height is observed during the 2006-2007 and 2009-2010 events captured by the network.
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Gaillard Fabienne, Reynaud Thierry, Thierry Virginie, Kolodziejczyk Nicolas, von Schuckmann Karina (2016). In-situ based reanalysis of the global ocean temperature and salinity with ISAS: variability of the heat content and steric height. Journal Of Climate, 29(4), 1305-1323. Publisher's official version : https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0028.1 , Open Access version : https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00309/42030/