Validation of salinity data from ARGO floats: Comparison between the older ARGO floats and that of later deployments

Abstract

Continued observation of ARGO floats or years (about 4 years) makes the conductivity sensor more vulnerable to fouling by marine life and associated drift in salinity measurements. In this paper, we address this issue by making use of floats depolyed in different years. Floats deployed in the East Sea and the Indian Ocean are examined to find out float-to-float match-ups in such a way that an older float pops up simultaneously with a newer deployment (with tolerable space-time difference). A time different of less than 100 km are considered for the match-up data sets. For analysis of the salinity drift under the stable water mass, observations of the floats from deepest water masses have been used. From the cross-check of ARGO floats in the East Sea and the Indian Ocean, it is found that there a systematic drift in the older float compared to later deployments. All drift results, consistently show negative bias indicating the typical nature of drift from fouled sensors. However, the drift is much less than 0.01, the specified accuracy of ARGO program