Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533
DOI 10.1007/s10236-017-1104-x
An objective algorithm for reconstructing the three-dimensional
ocean temperature field based on Argo profiles and SST data
Chaojie Zhou 1,2 & Xiaohua Ding 1 & Jie Zhang 2 & Jungang Yang 2 & Qiang Ma 1
Received: 12 June 2017 / Accepted: 19 September 2017 / Published online: 2 October 2017
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017
Abstract While global oceanic surface information with large-
scale, real-time, high-resolution data is collected by satellite
remote sensing instrumentation, three-dimensional (3D) obser-
vations are usually obtained from in situ measurements, but
with minimal coverage and spatial resolution. To meet the
needs of 3D ocean investigations, we have developed a new
algorithm to reconstruct the 3D ocean temperature field based
on the Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography (Argo)
profiles and sea surface temperature (SST) data. The Argo tem-
perature profiles are first optimally fitted to generate a series of
temperature functions of depth, with the vertical temperature
structure represented continuously. By calculating the deriva-
tives of the fitted functions, the calculation of the vertical tem-
perature gradient of the Argo profiles at an arbitrary depth is
accomplished. A gridded 3D temperature gradient field is then
found by applying inverse distance weighting interpolation in
the horizontal direction. Combined with the processed SST, the
3D temperature field reconstruction is realized below the sur-
face using the gridded temperature gradient. Finally, to confirm
the effectiveness of the algorithm, an experiment in the Pacific
Ocean south of Japan is conducted, for which a 3D temperature
field is generated. Compared with other similar gridded prod-
ucts, the reconstructed 3D temperature field derived by the
proposed algorithm achieves satisfactory accuracy, with corre-
lation coefficients of 0.99 obtained, including a higher spatial
Responsible Editor: Guoping Gao
* Chaojie Zhou
hitzcj@163.com
1
Department of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology at
Weihai, Weihai 264209, China
2
The First Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration,
No. 6 Xianxialing Road, Qingdao 266061, China
resolution (0.25° × 0.25°), resulting in the capture of smaller-
scale characteristics. Finally, both the accuracy and the superi-
ority of the algorithm are validated.
Keywords Three-dimensional temperature reconstruction .
Argo temperature profile . Sea surface temperature . Fitting
method . Vertical temperature gradient
1 Introduction
Various remote sensing instruments, such as an altimeter,
scatterometer and radiometer, are designed to collect informa-
tion of the ocean surface, including the sea surface tempera-
ture (SST) and height (SSH). Accordingly, a considerable
amount of observations of high resolution with a global cov-
erage have been gathered. Unfortunately, the derived informa-
tion generally only focuses on the sea surface without direct
investigation of the vertical structure of the deeper ocean.
Since 1998, over 1.5 million profiles have been collected
within the Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography
(Argo) project, which has built a real-time global ocean ob-
servation system for sampling the upper 2000 m of the ocean,
thereby making available temperature and salinity (T-S) ob-
servations with a global coverage (Riser et al. 2016). While
the data coverage and volume exceed all previous traditional
observations, the resolution and distribution of the profiles are
insufficient in space and time. Therefore, to meet the needs of
3D ocean investigations, the high-resolution reconstruction of
the 3D temperature and salinity fields based on the available
data is becoming a significant research issue.
Since the 1980s, several methods have been proposed to
reconstruct the 3D temperature and salinity field from sea
surface information (Guinehut et al. 2004; Carnes et al.
1994; Nardelli and Santoleri 2004), including physical
1524
methods, data assimilation technology within an ocean model,
and statistical methods. By taking characteristics of the water
movement and energy exchange into consideration, Hurlburt
(1986) built a numerical ocean model to dynamically transfer
simulated altimeter data into subsurface information. The
model reconstructs the deep pressure field even for situations
with energetic shallow and deep circulations, baroclinic
instability and a vigorous vertical exchange of energy.
However, the investigation was a pure simulation and the
dynamic transfer of information was not feasible for the
ocean or for all regions of parameter space relevant to the
ocean. Chu et al. (1997a, b) developed a thermal parametric
model to analyze observed regional sea temperature profiles
based on a layered structure of the temperature fields. Though
some characteristics of each profile were obtained, including
the mixed layer depth (MLD), thermocline depth and
thermocline temperature gradient, reconstruction of the 3D
temperature field proved difficult due to the original prupose
of the designed model. Yan et al. (2004) proposed a data
assimilation scheme based on 3D variational analysis
(3DVAR) to estimate T-S profiles from surface dynamic
height information. Both vertical correlations for temperature
and salinity background errors, as well as the nonlinear T-S
relation, were taken into consideration. While the results of the
designed experiment showed potential usefulness in altimetry
data assimilation, the conducted experiment does not repre-
sent the complicated nature of the ocean state satisfactorily. To
meet the U.S. Navy’s requirement for rapid estimates of pres-
ent and near-term ocean conditions, Fox et al. (2002) com-
bined in situ measurements, remotely sensed temperatures and
heights to form a single integrated analysis of temperature and
salinity on a regular grid. The regression coefficients relating
the subsurface temperature to the SSH and SST were calculat-
ed based on a large number of in situ T-S profiles.
Benefiting from the Argo project, many near real-time
monthly global gridded ocean T-S productions have been de-
veloped (e.g., Jamestec-Argo (Hosoda et al. 2008),
Roemmich-Argo (Roemmich and Gilson 2009), EN4-Argo
(Good et al. 2013), and BOA-Argo (Li et al. 2017)) by merg-
ing Argo T-S observations into a climatological initial condi-
tion directly based on optimum interpolation or more sophis-
ticated variational analysis methods (Troupin et al. 2010) .
However, the smaller-scale signals from the original observa-
tional data have been smoothed and concealed, and the hori-
zontal resolution of the most recent productions is 1° × 1°,
which is insufficient for mesoscale research.
A new algorithm is proposed here to construct a monthly
oceanic 3D temperature field with a horizontal resolution of
0.25° × 0.25°, which is realized by the combination of Argo
temperature profiles and SST data. To validate the effective-
ness of the algorithm, an experiment is performed for the
Pacific Ocean south of Japan (25° N–32° N, 136° E–143°
E) with a gridded temperature product for January 2009.
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533
Below, the data is introduced in Section 2, Section 3 refers
to the details of the algorithm process, while Section 4 de-
scribes the implementation and validation of the application
experiment, including the determination of the initial condi-
tions, vertical gradient, and the comparison with other existing
Argo products. Some final remarks are then provided.
2 Data
2.1 Argo profiles
Argo temperature profiles are obtained from the Argo Real-
Time Data Center of China (http://www.argo.org.cn/). After
quality control, 83 reasonable profiles are retained, with the
details of every profile employed in the experiment presented
in Table 1, including the profile number, measurement time,
and position. The experimental domain and original Argo
profiles are shown in Fig. 1. In the developed algorithm,
every profile is optimally fitted to obtain the continuous
vertical variation of the temperature gradient, from which we
obtain a gridded 3D gradient field by application of the
inverse distance weighted (IDW) method horizontally.
2.2 Sea surface temperature
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
(AVHRR) 1/4° daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface
Temperature (or daily OISST) is an analysis constructed by
combining observations from different platforms (satellites,
ships, buoys) on a regular global grid (Reynolds et al. 2007).
Here, the AVHRR SST data is applied to initialize the recon-
struction algorithm at the surface. Combined with the vertical
temperature gradient obtained by the fitted Argo temperature
profiles, the surface temperature information may be readily
transferred downward to the subsurface.
2.3 Validation data
According to the analysis of Li et al. (2017), we select two of
the existing Argo-derived gridded products, the version 4 of
the Met Office Hadley Centre BEN^ series of data sets (EN4)
and Barnes objective analysis (BOA)-Argo datasets, to vali-
date the reconstructed temperature, because of their good per-
formance. The EN4 dataset is generated by the optimal inter-
polation method, where the climatological World Ocean Atlas
(WOA98) is considered as the background. Moreover, tem-
perature and salinity information from all types of ocean pro-
filing instruments are merged. Unlike the EN4 dataset, the
background condition of the BOA-Argo dataset is generated
from original Argo observations by the Cressman scheme, so
that signals from the original data are retained, with the noise
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533 1525

Table 1 The Argo profiles (number, date, longitude, and latitude) used in the reconstruction algorithm

Number Date Lon (°E) Lat (°N) Number Date Lon (°E) Lat (°N)

2900157_332 2009-01-02 141.491 26.962 2900683_074 2009-01-26 137.435 27.090

2900157_333 2009-01-07 141.583 26.953 2900686_070 2009-01-16 137.494 25.191
2900157_334 2009-01-12 141.599 27.032 2900686_071 2009-01-27 137.109 25.327
2900157_335 2009-01-17 141.773 27.091 2900688_059 2009-01-04 142.803 30.138
2900157_336 2009-01-22 141.975 27.342 2900688_060 2009-01-14 142.300 30.176
2900157_337 2009-01-27 142.018 27.301 2900688_061 2009-01-24 141.889 29.975
2900489_261 2009-01-01 141.741 27.709 2900715_090 2009-01-06 136.392 26.340
2900489_262 2009-01-06 141.747 27.983 2900715_091 2009-01-11 136.216 26.655
2900489_263 2009-01-11 141.658 28.464 2900715_092 2009-01-16 136.172 26.889
2900489_264 2009-01-16 141.558 28.782 2900719_016 2009-01-03 138.391 31.683
2900489_265 2009-01-21 141.603 28.946 2900719_017 2009-01-09 138.595 31.267
2900489_266 2009-01-26 141.676 29.090 2900719_018 2009-01-13 138.648 30.945
2900489_267 2009-01-31 141.800 29.152 2900719_019 2009-01-18 138.731 30.842
2900501_263 2009-01-03 139.388 31.022 2900719_020 2009-01-23 138.676 30.775
2900501_264 2009-01-08 139.548 30.928 2900719_021 2009-01-29 138.659 30.772
2900501_265 2009-01-13 139.387 30.639 2900725_034 2009-01-02 137.518 27.052
2900501_266 2009-01-18 139.203 30.600 2900725_035 2009-01-12 137.513 26.936
2900501_267 2009-01-23 139.291 30.464 2900725_036 2009-01-22 137.772 26.702
2900501_268 2009-01-28 139.046 30.357 2900752_014 2009-01-08 142.083 25.770
2900510_107 2009-01-11 139.005 26.868 2900752_015 2009-01-18 141.606 25.944
2900510_108 2009-01-22 139.648 26.563 2900752_016 2009-01-28 141.301 26.053
2900512_201 2009-01-04 138.196 28.256 2900815_131 2009-01-01 137.770 29.708
2900512_202 2009-01-08 138.080 28.049 2900815_133 2009-01-06 138.203 29.405
2900512_203 2009-01-12 138.097 27.828 2900815_135 2009-01-10 138.316 29.210
2900512_204 2009-01-16 138.236 27.691 2900815_137 2009-01-13 138.265 28.687
2900512_205 2009-01-20 138.321 27.599 2900815_139 2009-01-17 138.378 28.176
2900512_206 2009-01-24 138.454 27.552 2900815_141 2009-01-22 138.665 27.914
2900512_207 2009-01-28 138.665 27.457 2900815_145 2009-01-30 139.623 27.708
2900582_121 2009-01-02 136.467 27.920 2900819_131 2009-01-01 136.097 30.193
2900582_122 2009-01-07 136.415 28.234 2900936_007 2009-01-05 142.330 31.635
2900582_123 2009-01-12 136.202 28.610 5900997_109 2009-01-08 137.056 25.329
2900582_124 2009-01-17 136.150 28.905 5900997_110 2009-01-18 136.840 25.488
2900582_125 2009-01-22 136.232 29.067 5900997_111 2009-01-28 136.389 25.670
2900582_126 2009-01-27 136.431 29.109 5901533_067 2009-01-06 139.964 25.820
2900665_139 2009-01-01 137.857 31.306 5901533_068 2009-01-16 139.821 25.631
2900665_140 2009-01-06 137.862 31.092 5902094_013 2009-01-09 140.074 27.765
2900665_141 2009-01-11 137.972 31.033 5902094_014 2009-01-19 140.142 27.842
2900665_142 2009-01-16 137.872 30.828 5902094_015 2009-01-29 140.108 28.114
2900665_143 2009-01-21 137.690 30.578 5902096_012 2009-01-03 140.854 28.313
2900665_144 2009-01-26 137.504 30.306 5902096_013 2009-01-14 140.694 28.545
2900665_145 2009-01-31 137.269 30.079 5902096_014 2009-01-24 140.355 28.785
2900683_072 2009-01-06 137.250 27.380

from other analyzed fields eliminated. Therefore, the BOA-
Argo dataset captures some mesoscale features better than
other gridded Argo datasets. Hence, because of the relatively
superior quality of these two datasets, both are applied to
validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
3 Algorithm description
The vertical structure of the 3D temperature field of the ocean
varies considerably depending on the location. The simple
model of Chu et al. (2000) is not accurate enough to represent
1526 Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533

Argo temperature profile is optimally fitted, the corre-

sponding vertical temperature gradient is calculated.
In the following, some details of the fitting process, includ-
ing the calculation of the vertical temperature gradient, are
illustrated. Let hb represent the MLD determined from the
Argo measurements, so that the measurements of a profile
are separated into two groups. For measurements within the
mixed layer whose measurement depth satisfies h ≤ hb, a
piecewise linear fitting method is applied. Supposing (hi,
T(xA, yA, hi)) and (hi + 1, T(xA, yA, hi + 1)) represent two arbi-
trary adjacent measurements in the mixed layer, the derived
temperature function T(xA, yA, h) between the two points can
be represented as
T ð x A ; y A ; hÞ ¼ T ð x A ; y A ; h i Þ

Fig. 1 Experimental domain (black box) and Argo profiles (red dots)
during January 2009
the vertical characteristics of the ocean temperature, in which
the constant, linear and exponential function of depth are
employed to describe the 3D temperature in the mixed layer,
þ Gi ðxA ; yA Þ⋅ðh−hi Þ; ðhi ≤ h ≤ hiþ1 ≤ hb Þ; ð1Þ
where Gi(xA, yA) is the vertical temperature gradient from
(hi, T(xA, yA, hi)) to (hi + 1, T(xA, yA, hi + 1)), which is calcu-
lated by
0

and the thermocline and abyssal layers, respectively. T ð xA ; y A ; hÞ

Considering the authenticity of Argo in situ observations T ðxA ; yA ; hiþ1 Þ−T ðxA ; yA ; hi Þ
(Riser et al. 2016), the actual vertical temperature variation ¼ Gi ðxA ; yA Þ¼ : ð2Þ
hiþ1 −hi
may be represented. However, the sampling points of a single
temperature profile are discrete in the vertical direction. To For the measurements beyond the MLD hb, the multi-
acquire the 3D temperature structure continuously, we apply Gaussian fitting procedure is used to fit the temperature varia-
a fitting method to every single Argo temperature profile to N
tion, which generally has the form ∑ ai expð−ððx−bi Þ =ci Þ 2 Þ,
obtain a series of temperature functions T(xA, yA, h), where i¼1
xA, yA are the longitude and latitude of the Argo profile, re- where ai, bi, and ci are the parameters to be determined by the
spectively, and h is the depth of the measurements. The verti- least-squares method (Lawson and Hanson 1974), and N rep-
cal gradient of temperature at an arbitrary depth is calculated resents the Gaussian order. The appropriate choice for the algo-
by the function T′(xA, yA, h). Then, by applying the IDW meth- rithm is discussed in Section 4.2. The fitted temperature below
od horizontally, the 3D vertical temperature gradient field is the MLD is written as
calculated. As remote sensing instrumentation provides global
temperature information at the surface, the 3D temperature T ðx A ; y A ; hÞ
field is reconstructed by the incorporation of SST and vertical 

 2 
N
i
temperature gradients. ¼ ∑ aixA ;yA exp i
− h−bxA ;yA =cxA ;yA ; ðh > hb Þ; ð3Þ
i¼1
To begin the reconstruction, the fitted temperature func-
tion T(xA, yA, h) and its derivative T′(xA, yA, h) should first where it is worth mentioning that these parameters of the dif-
be determined. Since the temperature variation in the ferent profiles are not the same. Because the function T(xA, yA,
mixed layer is smaller, and the density of Argo measure- h) is continuously differentiable when h > hb, its derivative is
ments is more centralized than the layers below, a single calculated by
fitting procedure for the whole profile is difficult to realize. 0
T ðxA ; yA ; hÞ ¼ −2 ∑ aixA ;yA =cixA ;yA
2
As shown in Fig. 2, the measurements of the temperature
i
profile are divided into two parts based on the MLD, in- 



  2 
cluding that above and below the MLD. Considering the
 h−bixA ;yA i i
exp − h−bxA ;yA =cxA ;yA :
irregular fluctuations within the mixed layer, a piecewise
linear fitting strategy is adopted. The higher measurement ð4Þ
density allows a linear estimation between two adjacent
measurements, so that any error introduced is limited. By applying the piecewise fitting method to every single
Below the MLD, we apply a multi-Gaussian fitting method profile, we obtain a series of temperature variation functions
to approximate the temperature variation. After the whole of depth denoted as {T(x1, y1, h), T(x2, y2, h), ⋯, T(xNA, yNA,
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533 1527

Fig. 2 Strategy to divide the

Argo profiles based on the MLD.
The red dot represents the
estimation of the MLD, with
fourth-order Gaussian fitting used
for profile fitting below the MLD

h)}, where NA is the total number of the original Argo profiles.
Once the fitting process for all Argo profiles is completed, the
vertical temperature gradient at an arbitrary depth is calculated
at the horizontal position of the Argo profile. Using the IDW
method in the horizontal direction, a 3D temperature gradient
field T′(xg, yg, h) is constructed, where (xg, yg) is a horizontally
meshed grid. Hence, there exists a relation between the tem-
perature field and its gradient


dT xg ; yg ; h 0


¼ T xg ; yg ; h ; ð5Þ
dh
with the initial condition T0 (h = 0) at (xg, yg) enabling con-
struction of the 3D temperature field using a numerical proce-
dure to solve Eq. 5.
Fortunately, as many global SST products with high spatial
resolution have been developed, they may be applied to esti-
mate the surface temperature (h = 0) for Eq. 5. However, the
remote sensing SST does not represent the true in situ obser-
vation, so that differences with the measured in situ tempera-
ture reach ±1 °C (Reynolds et al. 2007). To avoid this, a linear
regression between the remote sensing SST and the Argo
measurements is developed. Let hmin represent the minimum
measurement depth of the Argo profile, where the developed
formula is a linear relationship between the SST and T(xA, yA,
hmin), which can be represented as
T ðxA ; yA ; hmin Þ ¼ k  SST þ l: ð6Þ
Once the regression coefficients k, l are obtained from
statistics of the SST and the Argo observations, the relation-
ship Eq. 6 is applied to modify the initial condition at (xg, yg)
for the reconstruction of the 3D temperature field.
Additionally, the reconstruction is initialized at depth hmin
rather than h = 0. The flowchart of the whole algorithm is
presented in Fig. 3.
4 Algorithm implementation and validation
An experiment in the Pacific Ocean south of Japan is conduct-
ed to validate the algorithm. First, the initial conditions of the
reconstruction are modified by the regression analysis, which
aims to build a linear relationship between the shallowest
measurements of the Argo profiles and the SST data obtained
by remote sensing. The piecewise fitting process of each Argo
profile is then conducted accompanied by the calculation of
the vertical temperature gradient. To obtain the 3D tempera-
ture gradient field, the IDW method is employed horizontally.
Finally, the 3D temperature field is constructed and validated.
4.1 Determination of the initial conditions
Normally, the Argo floats measure the temperature of the up-
per ocean from ~ 4–6 m below the surface, while that provided
by the remote sensing products give the SST, resulting in an
information gap between the surface and the shallowest Argo
measurements. Moreover, the remotely sensed SST is not ac-
curate enough, and a non-negligible bias would be introduced
if we were to initialize the algorithm with this SST directly. To
eliminate these errors, we apply the algorithm initialization at
the shallowest measurement depth of the Argo profiles, rather
than the ocean surface, for which a regression analysis is
employed to translate the remotely sensed SST to this mea-
surement depth.
1528
Fig. 3 Flowchart of the 3D
temperature field reconstruction
algorithm
Initial
measurement
SST Regression
Initial
condition
Unfortunately, the shallowest measurement depths of dif-
ferent Argo profiles are not consistent. At first, the average
minimum depth hmin of the Argo profiles used in the recon-
struction is evaluated. As the measurements of Argo for ~ 4–
6 m may be absent, a filter (hmin < 6) is used to select the
normal ones in the 83 source profiles, of which 76 profiles
are finally obtained and denoted 1–76. As shown in Fig. 4a,
the averaged depth of the shallowest measurement is
hmin ¼ 4:47 m, where here we assume hmin ¼ 4:5 m for
approximation. According to Levitus (1982), the temperature
in the mixed layer varies little, allowing the transfer of the
shallowest measurements of the identified profiles to the uni-
form depth of 4.5 m, with the 3D reconstruction initialized at
hmin . To obtain the initial conditions of the 3D temperature
reconstruction, the regression method builds a relationship
between the AVHRR monthly averaged SST and Argo mea-
surements at hmin in the experimental domain during January
2009. Figure 4b presents the scatter diagram of the two mea-
surements and the linear regression between the Argo temper-
ature at 4.5 m depth (y) and the SST (x) as
y ¼ 0:545x þ 9:81: ð7Þ
While Eq. 7 may suggest a poor linear relationship between
the AVHRR observed SST and the Argo measurements, it is
nonetheless reasonable because the ocean skin temperature is
influenced by the prevailing winds, solar radiation, and many
other factors, so that the ocean surface is cooled or heated
accordingly, resulting in more complicated characteristics
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533
Start
Argo profile
Y Piecewise linear
Mixed layer
function fitting
N
Gaussian function
fitting
Gradient of the
profile
IDW
3D gradient field
Numerical method
End
than the Argo measurements. Since the relationship be-
tween the temperature at the surface and depth hmin has
been constructed, the initial condition T(xg, yg, hmin) of the
reconstruction at the grid (xg, yg) is calculated by taking the
gridded AVHRR SST as x in Eq. 7. Here, the resolution of
the 3D mesh grid is 0.25° × 0.25° in the horizontal direc-
tion, which is derived from the projection of the AVHRR
dataset. To confirm the effect of the regression equation,
the corresponding root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the
original AVHRR SST and the modified one with the
shallowest Argo measurements are calculated, with results
showing the RMSE reduced by 0.2 °C after the regression
procedure.
4.2 Determination of the vertical temperature gradient
Based on the regression analysis, the modified SST data are
taken as the initial conditions of the reconstruction algorithm.
In the following, we focus on the generation of the 3D vertical
temperature gradient field used in the algorithm, whose details
have been illustrated in Section 3. For each original Argo
profile, the piecewise fitting method is employed and a series
of temperature functions {T(x1, y1, h), T(x2, y2, h), …,
T(xNA, yNA, h)} are obtained. As the temperature presents dif-
ferent characteristics in the vertical layers (González-Pola
et al. 2007), the classical 0.5 °C threshold value from
Monterey and Levitus (1997) is chosen as the criterion to
determine the MLD hb of each Argo profile roughly as fol-
lows. Let {Ti} be the vertical temperature measurements of a
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533 1529

Fig. 4 Distribution of the minimum measure depth of the identified Argo profile (a); the linear relationship between the shallowest measurements of the
Argo profiles and the remotely sensed SST based on a regression analysis (b)

single Argo profile, where T0 represents the shallowest mea-
surements. For the measurements (hi, Ti) satisfying
jT i −T 0 j > 0:5
and
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
jT iþ1 −T 0 j > 0:5 a2 þ b2 ;
the shallowest depth hi is considered as the MLD hb. This
strategy for the determination of the MLD of two Argo pro-
files (2900157_333, 2900719_019) is presented in Fig. 5,
where the MLD derived from the 0.5 °C threshold strategy
are 99.3 and 199.5 m, respectively, and both agree well with
the manual identification.
Based on the MLD of an Argo profile, the measurements
5, 6). The RMSE of the fitting results is presented in Fig. 7a,
showing the improved accuracy of the fitting method with
increasing fitting order. However, the benefit of a higher order
is not necessarily optimal as the fitted temperature may result
in the Bover fit^ phenomenon, in which the fitted temperature
is extremely high at some depths. By taking both the RMSE
and the smoothness of the fitting function into consideration, a
fourth-order Gaussian fitting function is chosen. To validate
the determination, all the Argo measurements below the
mixed layer used in the experiment are collected and fitted
0
2900157_333
2900719_019
200
hb=99.3m

are divided into two parts: within and below the mixed layer.
hb=199.5m
400
Within the mixed layer, the linear fitting procedure is
employed between the adjacent measure points, from which
a piecewise linear function of depth is obtained. As shown in 600
Depth(m)

Fig. 6, any depth difference between two measurements is

generally limited to 5 and 10 m, while the corresponding 800
temperature difference is minor. From the proportional
distribution presented in Fig. 6b, we find 66% of the ad- 1000
jacent measurements have a temperature difference of
~ 0–0.01 °C, with almost 90% < 0.1 °C. Therefore, the
1200
fitting procedure of the piecewise linear function within
the mixed layer is reliable, and the error introduced by the
fitting process is acceptable. 1400
0 5 10 15 20 25
In Section 3, the choice of the multi-Gaussian fitting meth- Temp(oC)
od below the MLD has been illustrated without a specified
Fig. 5 The MLD determined by the threshold of 0.5 °C (Monterey
fitting order N. In the following, the optimal N is determined and Levitus 1997) for two Argo profiles: 2900157_333 (red),
by a fitting test including five Gaussian fitting orders (2, 3, 4, 2900719_019 (blue)
1530
Fig. 6 Difference of temperature and depth between two adjacent Argo measurements in the mixed layer in terms of a a scatter diagram and b the
proportional distribution of the temperature difference
by the fourth-order Gaussian function. As shown in Fig. 7b,
the variation of vertical temperature with the depth is well
described.
As mentioned above, the piecewise fitting strategy is applied
to each Argo profile to obtain a series of vertical temperature
functions {T(x1, y1, h), T(x2, y2, h), ⋯, T(xNA, yNA, h)}, as well
as the vertical gradient function. The fitting results of two
profiles (5902096_013, 2900688_061) shown in Fig. 8 dem-
onstrate well-fitted measurements with RMSE of 0.17 and
0.09 °C, respectively. As it is the vertical temperature gradient
that is calculated in the 3D reconstruction algorithm, the error
in the final temperature field introduced by the fitting process
is limited, which is represented by the ratio of the fitting
RMSE to the depth. Moreover, because the temperature tends
to be well-behaved below 1000 m, the estimation beyond the
measurements of Argo are conducted by the temperature
fitting function T(h).
Fig. 7 Impact of Gaussian function order on the fitting accuracy (a) and the effect of fourth-order choice applied to the entire Argo measurements below
the mixed layer (b)
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533
4.3 Three-dimensional temperature field reconstruction
and validation
From the piecewise fitting procedure, both the vertical tem-
perature and the gradient function are available at the posi-
tion of the Argo profiles. In the following, the 3D temper-
ature is reconstructed from the initial conditions and the
vertical temperature gradient. Let T′(xA, yA, h) denote the
vertical temperature gradient of an Argo profile at an arbi-
trary depth and (xg, yg, h) the 3D meshed grid, which is built
by the projection of the AVHRR grid downward from the
surface, then T′(xg, yg, h) is derived from the interpolation
of T′(xA, yA, h) horizontally based on the IDW method. The
spatial decorrelation scale is set as 200 km to guarantee the
data source for each grid. Since the initial conditions and
the 3D temperature gradient field are obtained, the recon-
struction of the 3D temperature field is conducted by
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533
Fig. 8 Complete T − h fitting function of the two Argo profiles 5902096_013 (a) and 2900688_061 (b)
solving Eq. 5. Let Tn(xg, xg) represent the ocean tempera-
ture at layer n, then the reconstruction scheme is



T n xg ; yg ; hn ¼ T n−1 xg ; yg þ Δh
0


 T xg ; yg ; hn−1 ; ð8Þ
where Δh = hn − hn − 1 and T0(xg, yg) = T(xg, yg, hmin).
To verify the efficiency of the developed algorithm, the
vertical layer from the BOA-Argo dataset for depths of 10–
1200 m is employed, including the minimum averaged depth
of 4.5 m. By the combination of the derived initial conditions
and the temperature gradient, the 3D temperature field is
reconstructed using Eq. 8, and is denoted hereafter as the
FRT result (reconstructed temperature based on fitting
method). According to Li et al. (2017), the performance
of the BOA-Argo dataset demonstrates both an accuracy
and retainment of mesoscale features. The EN4 monthly
objective analysis is also reliable as many types of ocean
profiling instruments have been used. Therefore, both the
BOA-Argo and EN4 gridded products are employed to
validate the derived FRT results.
Figure 9 shows the absolute bias (Abs), standard deviation
(Std), correlation coefficient (Cor), and RMSE between the
FRT results and the BOA-Argo (a) and EN4 (b) datasets,
demonstrating that the FRT results are highly consistent with
the two existing datasets, with correlation coefficients of 0.99
for both datasets. Though the relative RMSE (0.67 °C,
0.76 °C) of the two comparisons are presented, the quality
of the FRT results could not be confirmed definitively.
Therefore, to validate the FRT precisely, the BOA-Argo
dataset is taken as the reference value to evaluate the EN4
dataset. If the FRT’s RMSE is comparable with that of the
EN4 dataset, we suggest that the accuracy of the 3D recon-
struction is validated. As the RMSE between the BOA-Argo
1531
and EN4 datasets is 0.63 °C, which is just a little smaller than
that of the FRT (0.67 °C), the accuracy of the reconstruction is
verified indirectly.
The horizontal resolution of the reconstruction of
0.25° × 0.25° deems it more valuable than the existing prod-
ucts. As a result, more mesoscale information is represented in
the reconstruction. Since the resolution of the BOA-Argo,
EN4, and FRT results are different vertically, the temperatures
are both interpolated to the 100 and 500 m layers. For com-
parison, the reconstruction captures the main spatial structures
of the ocean temperature well, with more mesoscale charac-
teristics represented by the higher temporal resolution. As
shown in Fig. 10, the horizontal temperature of the EN4
dataset is the least resolved. Because the WOA98 climatolog-
ical background data is applied directly in the data generation
based on the optimal interpolation method, the original infor-
mation of the Argo measurements is eliminated. Unlike the
EN4 dataset, the monthly initial conditions of the BOA-Argo
dataset are generated from the original Argo profiles after
quality control, so that the mesoscale signals are retained
and, therefore, some broader structure is represented. For our
temperature reconstruction, only the original Argo tempera-
ture profiles are employed and applied directly in our algo-
rithm without any interaction with the other analyzed fields,
with more details of the surface temperature also introduced
by the high-resolution AVHRR SST data. Therefore, the me-
soscale structure captured by our reconstruction is largely im-
proved based on the proposed algorithm.
5 Conclusion
An efficient algorithm is proposed to reconstruct the 3D ocean
temperature field based on the Argo profiles and the AVHRR
1532 Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533

Fig. 9 Scatter diagram between the FRT results and BOA-Argo (a) and EN4 (b) products

SST data. Considering the discrete measurements of an Argo
profile, a piecewise fitting strategy is adopted to obtain the
continuous vertical temperature variation, which is obtained
at the Argo measurement position, and interpolated with the
IDW method to the grid. Initialized by the modified SST, the
algorithm could be realized downward from the surface.
To verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, an ex-
periment in the southern ocean of Japan is conducted for
which the 3D temperature field is reconstructed. Compared
with the BOA-Argo and EN4 products, the reconstructed 3D
temperature field achieves a satisfactory accuracy, but with a
higher resolution, so that more mesoscale information is cap-
tured in the reconstructed temperature field. For most of the
existing Argo products, the Argo measurements are merged
into the background directly, and the original information is
eliminated; when modifying the initial conditions by the
merged Argo temperature in the BOA-Argo product, the cor-
responding capacity is improved. However, the ocean temper-
ature is a complicated variable, so that the temperature esti-
mation by interpolation where data is lacking is not accurate
enough. Since the gradient of temperature is more stagnant
than the temperature itself, the estimation by gradient interpo-
lation seems to be a better choice in the developed algorithm.
As the temperature field becomes less variable in the
deeper ocean, the continuous T − h function may provide an
estimation of the temperature beyond the profile. While the

Fig. 10 Spatial pattern of temperature at 100 m (top) and 500 m (bottom) depths derived from the BOA-Argo (left), EN4 (middle), and FRT
(right) datasets
Ocean Dynamics (2017) 67:1523–1533
validation of the 3D temperature reconstruction algorithm has
been conducted over a relatively small region, in the future, a
larger region or global application will be performed to further
validate the algorithm.
Acknowledgments We would like to give thanks to the China Argo
Real-Time Data Center for providing the Argo profile data product (http://
www.argo.org.cn/). The study is supported by the National Key Research
and Develo pment Program o f Ch ina u nder contract nos .
2016YFA0600102 & 2016YFC1401800; the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under contract no.41576176; the Key Project of
Science and Technology of Weihai under contract no. 2014DXG J14
and the Disciplinary Construction Guide Foundation of Harbin Institute
of Technology at Weihai under contract no. WH20140206.
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