Real-time quality control of optical backscattering data from Biogeochemical-Argo floats

Giorgio Dall'Olmo; Udaya Bhaskar Tvs; Henry Bittig; Emmanuel Boss; Jodi Brewster; Hervé Claustre; Matt Donnelly; Tanya Maurer; David Nicholson; Violetta Paba; Josh Plant; Antoine Poteau; Raphaëlle Sauzède; Christina Schallenberg; Catherine Schmechtig; Claudia Schmid; Xiaogang Xing

doi:10.12688/openreseurope.15047.2

Real-time quality control of optical backscattering data from Biogeochemical-Argo floats

Open Res Eur. 2023 May 30:2:118. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.15047.2. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Giorgio Dall'Olmo^{1

2}, Udaya Bhaskar Tvs³, Henry Bittig⁴, Emmanuel Boss⁵, Jodi Brewster⁶, Hervé Claustre⁷, Matt Donnelly⁸, Tanya Maurer⁹, David Nicholson¹⁰, Violetta Paba⁸, Josh Plant⁹, Antoine Poteau⁷, Raphaëlle Sauzède⁷, Christina Schallenberg¹¹, Catherine Schmechtig¹², Claudia Schmid¹³, Xiaogang Xing¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Sezione di Oceanografia, Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale - OGS, Borgo Grotta Gigante, Trieste, 34010, Italy.
² Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, UK.
³ Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Ocean Valley, Pragathinagar (BO), Nizampet (SO), Hyderabad, 500090, India.
⁴ Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Rostock-Warnemünde, 18119, Germany.
⁵ School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME, 04469-5706, USA.
⁶ Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA.
⁷ Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche (LOV), CNRS & Sorbonne University, Villefranche-sur-Mer, 06230, France.
⁸ British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Liverpool, UK.
⁹ Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Moss Landing, CA, 95039, USA.
¹⁰ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, 02478, USA.
¹¹ Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia.
¹² OSU Ecce Terra, CNRS & Sorbonne University, Paris Cedex 05, 75252, France.
¹³ NOAA/AOML/PHOD, Miami, FL, 33149, USA.
¹⁴ State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Background: Biogeochemical-Argo floats are collecting an unprecedented number of profiles of optical backscattering measurements in the global ocean. Backscattering (BBP) data are crucial to understanding ocean particle dynamics and the biological carbon pump. Yet, so far, no procedures have been agreed upon to quality control BBP data in real time.

Methods: Here, we present a new suite of real-time quality-control tests and apply them to the current global BBP Argo dataset. The tests were developed by expert BBP users and Argo data managers and have been implemented on a snapshot of the entire Argo dataset.

Results: The new tests are able to automatically flag most of the "bad" BBP profiles from the raw dataset.

Conclusions: The proposed tests have been approved by the Biogeochemical-Argo Data Management Team and will be implemented by the Argo Data Assembly Centres to deliver real-time quality-controlled profiles of optical backscattering. Provided they reach a pressure of about 1000 dbar, these tests could also be applied to BBP profiles collected by other platforms.

Keywords: BBP; BGC Argo; oprical backscattering; particles.

Grants and funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement n. 824131 (Euro-Argo RISE project): see also preliminary results related to this manuscript in the https://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/157288/file/D4.3_v1.0.pdf}{project report. GDO acknowledges support from the UK National Centre for Earth Observation. DN acknowledges support from U.S. National Science Foundation Awards n. 1946578 and n. 2023080. CS acknowledges grant funding from the Australian Government as part of the Antarctic Science Collaboration Initiative program.