The complementary value of XBT and Argo observations to monitor ocean boundary currents and meridional heat and volume transports: A case study in the Atlantic Ocean

What is it about?

With the advance of the Argo float technology, Argo measurements became the main global source of broad-scale temperature data in the early 2000s, while expendable bathythermographs (XBTs) started providing targeted observations to resolve mesoscale features, such as boundary, surface and subsurface currents and temperature monitoring along across basin fixed transects. A question arose as to whether Argo floats could also be comparable or even replace the XBT transect observations to monitor boundary currents, meridional heat transport, and AMOC. This study answered this question by remapping Argo and XBT data at different temporal and spatial resolutions and comparing their data density, boundary currents and cross-basin meridional heat and volume transports.

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Why is it important?

The results show that the use of Argo data to measure boundary currents is subject to high uncertainty due to uneven temporal and spatial coverage. For meridional heat transport and AMOC, Argo and XBT data are comparable at lower spatial (5 degrees) and temporal (30 days) resolutions, but these estimates show increased errors relative to a high-resolution baseline.

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