TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparison of global objective analyzed T-S fields of the upper ocean for 2008-2011
AU - Chang, You Soon
AU - Vecchi, Gabriel A.
AU - Rosati, Anthony
AU - Zhang, Shaoqing
AU - Yang, Xiaosong
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Visiting Scientist Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (NOAA/GFDL) , which is administered by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). We acknowledge the international Argo program for its rich, publicly available database, and research groups on EN3, GFDL, IPRC, JAMSTEC, and SIO, which helped in making this study possible. We thank Prof. Dean Roemmich at SIO for his comments regarding the earlier version of this manuscript.
PY - 2014/9
Y1 - 2014/9
N2 - There have been few attempts to quantify errors in various objective analyzed (OA) fields, even though they have potential uncertainties associated with data handling and mapping methods. Here, we compare five different OA fields (EN3, GFDL, IPRC, JAMSTEC, and SIO) for 2008-2011. The variability and linear trends of the upper ocean temperature are very similar in every ocean basin, but the mean values are different from each other. This discrepancy is evident, especially around the southern ocean (±. 0.07. °C in the Antarctic Ocean) where Argo observations are still sparse, which is related to different first-guess climatologies and decorrelation length scales applied to individual OA products. In the subpolar North Atlantic, detailed spatial anomalous patterns are also different. Along the boundary current areas, substantial warming (salting) anomalies with respect to WOA09 climatology are depicted by GFDL, IPRC, and SIO. By comparing with statistical bin-averaged fields and data assimilation products, we confirm that this anomalous pattern is robust, but it could be exaggerated when we calculate the anomalies with WOA09 climatology or other OA fields showing a relatively weak horizontal gradient across the boundary current regions.
AB - There have been few attempts to quantify errors in various objective analyzed (OA) fields, even though they have potential uncertainties associated with data handling and mapping methods. Here, we compare five different OA fields (EN3, GFDL, IPRC, JAMSTEC, and SIO) for 2008-2011. The variability and linear trends of the upper ocean temperature are very similar in every ocean basin, but the mean values are different from each other. This discrepancy is evident, especially around the southern ocean (±. 0.07. °C in the Antarctic Ocean) where Argo observations are still sparse, which is related to different first-guess climatologies and decorrelation length scales applied to individual OA products. In the subpolar North Atlantic, detailed spatial anomalous patterns are also different. Along the boundary current areas, substantial warming (salting) anomalies with respect to WOA09 climatology are depicted by GFDL, IPRC, and SIO. By comparing with statistical bin-averaged fields and data assimilation products, we confirm that this anomalous pattern is robust, but it could be exaggerated when we calculate the anomalies with WOA09 climatology or other OA fields showing a relatively weak horizontal gradient across the boundary current regions.
KW - Climatology
KW - Objective analysis
KW - Upper ocean temperature
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84899866549&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84899866549&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jmarsys.2014.04.001
DO - 10.1016/j.jmarsys.2014.04.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84899866549
SN - 0924-7963
VL - 137
SP - 13
EP - 20
JO - Journal of Marine Systems
JF - Journal of Marine Systems
ER -