MBT Correction and Interpolation

Distribution of MBT profiles from the WOD09 data base. Copyright: UHH/CEN/AJB

Mechanical bathythermograph (MBT) measured temperature down to the depth of about 250 m from a slowly moving ship. Since the 1940s and before the introduction of the expendable bathythermograph (XBT) the MBTs contributed the majority of the subsurface temperature measurements in the ocean. The MBT data were shown to be biased due to systematic errors in depth (pressure) and temperature sensors. Since the MBT performance is not well documented in the literature we developed a correction method based on the global comparison between MBT and classical hydrographic station data. Using original MBT data from the World ocean database WOD09 (Boyer et al., 2009) we provide a data product which includes depth- and temperature-corrected MBT profiles. The correction method is based on the recent study by Gouretski and Reseghetti (2010).
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References

T. P. Boyer, J. I. Antonov, O. K. Baranova, H. E. Garcia, D. R. Johnson, R. A. Locarnini, A. V. Mishonov, T. D. O’Brien, D. Seidov, I. V. Smolyar, M. M. Zweng, 2009: World Ocean Database 2009, Chapter 1: Introduction, NOAA Atlas NESDIS 66, Ed. S. Levitus, U.S. Gov. Printing Office, Wash., D.C., 216 pp., DVD. (pdf, not barrier-free)