A climatology-based quality control procedure for profiling float oxygen data

Over 450 Argo profiling floats equipped with oxygen sensors have been deployed, but no quality control (QC) protocols have been adopted by the oceanographic community for use by Argo data centers. As a consequence, the growing float oxygen data set as a whole is not readily utilized for many types of biogeochemical studies. Here we present a simple procedure that can be used to correct first-order errors (offset and drift) in profiling float oxygen data by comparing float data to a monthly climatology (World Ocean Atlas 2009). Float specific correction terms for the entire array were calculated. This QC procedure was evaluated by (1) comparing the climatology-derived correction coefficients to those derived from discrete samples for 14 floats and (2) comparing correction coefficients for seven floats that had been calibrated twice prior to deployment (once in the factory and once in-house), with the second calibration ostensibly more accurate than the first. The corrections presented here constrain most float oxygen measurements to better than 3% at the surface.