Twenty years of ocean observations with China Argo

The international Argo program,a global observational array of nearly 4000 autonomous profiling floats initiated in the late 1990s,which measures the water temperature and salinity of the upper 2000 m of the global ocean,has revolutionized oceanography.It has been recognized one of the most successful ocean observation systems in the world.Today,the proposed decade action“OneArgo”for building an integrated global,full-depth,and multidisciplinary ocean observing array for beyond 2020 has been endorsed.In the past two decades since 2002,with more than 500 Argo deployments and 80 operational floats currently,China has become an important partner of the Argo program.Two DACs have been established to process the data reported from all Chinese floats and deliver these data to the GDACs in real time,adhering to the unified quality control procedures proposed by the Argo Data Management Team.Several Argo products have been developed and released,allowing accurate estimations of global ocean warming,sea level change and the hydrological cycle,at interannual to decadal scales.In addition,Deep and BGC-Argo floats have been deployed,and time series observations from these floats have proven to be extremely useful,particularly in the analysis of synoptic-scale to decadal-scale dynamics.The future aim of China Argo is to build and maintain a regional Argo fleet comprising approximately 400 floats in the northwestern Pacific,South China Sea,and Indian Ocean,accounting for 9%of the global fleet,in addition to maintaining 300 Deep Argo floats in the global ocean(25%of the global Deep Argo fleet).A regional BGC-Argo array in the western Pacific also needs to be established and maintained.

China Argo project:progress in China Argo ocean observations and data applications

This paper reviews the current achievements of the China Argo project. It considers aspects of both the construction of the Argo observing array, float technology, and the quality control and sharing of its data. The developments of associated data products and data applications for use in the fields of ocean, atmosphere, and climate research are discussed, particularly those related to tropical cyclones(typhoons), ocean circulation,mesoscale eddies, turbulence, oceanic heat/salt storage and transportation, water masses, and operational oceanic/atmospheric/climatic forecasts and predictions. Finally, the challenges and opportunities involved in the long-term maintenance and sustained development of the China Argo ocean observation network are outlined.Discussion also focuses on the necessity for increasing the number of floats in the Indian Ocean and for expanding the regional Argo observation network in the South China Sea, together with the importance of promoting the use of Argo data by the maritime countries of Southeast Asia and India.

Ocean Observation Technologies:A Review

Covering about three quarters of the surface area of the earth,the ocean is a critical source of sustenance,medicine,and commerce.However,such vast expanse in both surface area and depth,presents myriad observing challenges for researchers,such as corrosion,attenuation of electromagnetic waves,and high pressure.Ocean observation technologies are progressing from the conventional single node,static and short-term modalities to multiple nodes,dynamic and long-term modalities,to increase the density of both temporal and spatial samplings.Although people’s knowledge of the oceans has been still quite limited,the contributions of many nations cooperating to develop the Global Ocean Observing System(GOOS)have remarkably promoted the development of ocean observing technologies.This paper reviews the typical observing technologies deployed from the sea surface to the seafloor,and discusses the future trend of the ocean observation systems with the docking technology and sustained ocean energy.

Ocean Observation from Haiyang Satellites

In 2018,China successfully launched three new Haiyang(which means ocean in Chinese,referred to as HY)satellites which are an ocean color observation satellite HY-1C(operational),an ocean dynamics environment satellite HY-2B(operational)and the China-France ocean satellite CFOSAT(experimental).In 2019,all the three satellites had finished their commissioning phases and were declared operational.HY-2A satellite continues to operate in-orbit,and its operational status is basically normal.So in 2020,China has 4 Haiyang satellites in-orbit,China’s ocean satellites enter into a new operational application phase.The operation of the ground application system of Chinese ocean satellites is stable.In 2019,Beijing,Hainan,Mudanjiang,and Hangzhou ocean satellite ground stations had received the data of HY-1C,HY-2A,HY-2B,and CFOSAT 5012 orbits and 26.46 TB data had been distributed to both domestic and international users.Chinese ocean satellite data has played an important role in marine disaster prevention and mitigation,development and management of marine resources,maintenance of marine rights and interests,marine environment protection,scientific researches,and blue economy development.

Quality control for ocean observations: From present to future

The quality control(QC) of ocean observational data, essential to establish a high-quality global ocean database, is one of the basic data pre-processing steps in oceanography research, marine monitoring, and forecasting. With the introduction of various advanced instruments in recent decades, oceanographic surveys have expanded from coastal regions to open oceans.However, as ocean in-situ observations are obtained using different instruments that offer heterogeneous data qualities, it is paramount that bad data could be accurately and efficiently identified via QC to provide a reliable global ocean database. In this review, we briefly summarize the latest progress of QC for oceanic in-situ observations, and mainly focus on temperature and salinity data. The similarities and differences between QC schemes developed by various ocean organizations are introduced. We also discuss the performances of the various QC schemes and identify the key challenges. Based on the discussions, several recommendations are proposed for future improvements in the QC for ocean observations.