Fresh salinity anomalies found in Argo float 5906299

RBR has analyzed the salinity from Argo APEX float 5906299 equipped with an RBRargo3 CTD and has found a clear and sudden fresh salinity anomaly after about 30 cycles.  It was determined that the float spent an abnormally long amount of time at the surface on several occasions, often preceding a clear salinity anomaly event.  It is hypothesized that the … Read More

Argo “Salty drift” Salinity Data Issue Notice 2021

Starting in 2015, an increased number of Sea-Bird conductivity cells used on Argo floats have drifted salty (https://argo.ucsd.edu/data/data-faq/#sbepsal).   The fraction of “salty drifters” has been correlated with particular CTD batches, with some percentages being greater than 50% by the end of their second year after deployment.  Sea-Bird Scientific has implemented a manufacturing change at the end of 2018, and … Read More

Fast Salty Drifters documented by DMQC operators

The DMQC operators have filled in this Google spreadsheet with information on which floats have exhibited signs of Fast Salty Drift.  It has been set up to perform calculations and create plots automatically, so please follow the instructions.  There are several sheets to look at including some that pertain to just European floats and others that are international.

Updated Sea-Bird SBE41CP and SBE61 CTD Quality Concern

Please see this important announcement from Sea-Bird regarding SBE41CP and SBE61 CTDs in certain serial number ranges. There is a ‘do not deploy’ directive for the following: SBE 41CP and SBE41CP Deep:  10482-11252 SBE 61: 5669-5724

Apex pneumatic bladder issue

Dana Swift describes issues with the pneumatic system for APEX floats purchased in the 2018 – 2019 period. See the document for more details.

New version of OWC available on GitHub

Version 3.0.0 is available here: https://github.com/ArgoDMQC/matlab_owc/releases Notes about what is new in release 3.0.0 from Annie Wong and Cecile Cabanes: To resolve some legacy issues with the old OW variables: “scale_age” is renamed “scale_age_small”; “scale_age_large” is set to NaN for the old OW mapped profiles. “build_ptmp_xyt_cov.m” is now used in “calculate_piecewisefit.m” to compute the number of degrees of freedom (NDF) … Read More