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

Abstract

In the present study, temperature and salinity from APEX -Argo floats with reported SPB (Argo-SPB) and salinity from normal floats without any reported SPB (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 (theta) surface (10 degree C) 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 theta surface of 10 degree C 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.