Sea Turtles for Ocean Research and Monitoring: Overview and Initial Results of the STORM Project in the Southwest Indian Ocean

Autor: Olivier Bousquet, Mayeul Dalleau, Marion Bocquet, Philippe Gaspar, Soline Bielli, Stéphane Ciccione, Elisabeth Remy, Arthur Vidard
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 7 (2020)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2296-7745
DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2020.594080
Popis: Surface and sub-surface ocean temperature observations collected by sea turtles (ST) during the first phase (Jan 2019–April 2020) of the Sea Turtle for Ocean Research and Monitoring (STORM) project are compared against in-situ and satellite temperature measurements, and later relied upon to assess the performance of the Glo12 operational ocean model over the west tropical Indian Ocean. The evaluation of temperature profiles collected by STs against collocated ARGO drifter measurements show good agreement at all sample depths (0–250 m). Comparisons against various operational satellite sea surface temperature (SST) products indicate a slight overestimation of ST-borne temperature observations of ∼0.1°±°0.6° that is nevertheless consistent with expected uncertainties on satellite-derived SST data. Comparisons of ST-borne surface and subsurface temperature observations against Glo12 temperature forecasts demonstrate the good performance of the model surface and subsurface (50 m), the model is, however, shown to significantly underestimate ocean temperatures as already noticed from global evaluation scores performed operationally at the basin scale. The distribution of model errors also shows significant spatial and temporal variability in the first 50 m of the ocean, which will be further investigated in the next phases of the STORM project.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals