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Estimating ocean climatologies for short periods: A simple technique for removing the effect of eddies from temperature and salinity profiles
Author(s) -
Higginson S.,
Thompson K. R.,
Liu Y.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2009gl039647
Subject(s) - argo , climatology , altimeter , mesoscale meteorology , temperature salinity diagrams , environmental science , sea surface temperature , salinity , sea surface height , satellite altimetry , satellite , gulf stream , geology , oceanography , remote sensing , aerospace engineering , engineering
Existing temperature and salinity ocean climatologies are usually mean fields based on observations collected over many decades. Because of low frequency variability of major features such as the Gulf Stream it is often more appropriate to define the mean for shorter periods, but there are subsequently fewer observations and more problems with aliasing of mesoscale variability. We present a method for removing eddy‐related noise from observations using satellite altimeter sea surface height measurements. We demonstrate the technique using Argo observations from the northwest Atlantic and produce mean temperature and salinity fields for an eight year period. The reduction in variance achieved is quantified. Comparison with an existing climatology shows that there is good agreement between the two analyses but that the representation of the Gulf Stream is more realistic in the new climatology.