Coherent heat patterns revealed by unsupervised classification of Argo temperature profiles in the North Atlantic Ocean

• Published in: Progress in Oceanography
• Main Authors: Maze, Guillaume, Mercier, Herlé, Fablet, Ronan, Tandeo, Pierre, Lopez Radcenco, Manuel, Lenca, Philippe, Feucher, Charlène, Le Goff, Clement
• Other Authors: Laboratoire de physique des océans (LPO), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), Lab-STICC_TB_CID_TOMS, Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance (Lab-STICC), Université européenne de Bretagne - European University of Brittany (UEB)-École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB)-Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Télécom Bretagne-Institut Brestois du Numérique et des Mathématiques (IBNM), Université de Brest (UBO)-École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne (ENSTA Bretagne)-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université européenne de Bretagne - European University of Brittany (UEB)-École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB)-Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Télécom Bretagne-Institut Brestois du Numérique et des Mathématiques (IBNM), Université de Brest (UBO)-École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne (ENSTA Bretagne)-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Département Signal et Communications (SC), Université européenne de Bretagne - European University of Brittany (UEB)-Télécom Bretagne-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT), Lab-STICC_TB_CID_DECIDE, Département Logique des Usages, Sciences sociales et Sciences de l'Information (LUSSI)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2017
• Subjects: Heat patterns; Argo; Temperature profiles; North Atlantic Ocean; Unsupervised classification; [SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean; Atmosphere; [SDU.STU.OC]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Oceanography; [SPI.SIGNAL]Engineering Sciences [physics]/Signal and Image processing; [STAT.ML]Statistics [stat]/Machine Learning [stat.ML]; north atlantic current; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-01511358; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2016.12.008

International audience A quantitative understanding of the integrated ocean heat content depends on our ability to determine how heat is distributed in the ocean and identify the associated coherent patterns. This study demonstrates how this can be achieved using unsupervised classification of Argo temperature profiles. The classification method used is a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) that decomposes the Probability Density Function of a dataset into a weighted sum of Gaussian modes. It is determined that the North Atlantic Argo dataset of temperature profiles contains 8 groups of vertically coherent heat patterns, or classes. Each of the temperature profile classes reveals unique and physically coherent heat distributions along the vertical axis. A key result of this study is that, when mapped in space, each of the 8 classes is found to define an oceanic region, even if no spatial information was used in the model determination. The classification result is independent of the location and time of the ARGO profiles. Two classes show cold anomalies throughout the water column with amplitude decreasing with depth. They are found to be localized in the subpolar gyre and along the poleward flank of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current (NAC). One class has nearly zero anomalies and a large spread throughout the water column. It is found mostly along the NAC. One class has warm anomalies near the surface (50 m) and cold ones below 200 m. It is found in the tropical/equatorial region. The remaining four classes have warm anomalies throughout the water column, one without depth dependance (in the southeastern part of the subtropical gyre), the other three with clear maximums at different depths (100 m, 400 m and 1000 m). These are found along the southern flank of the North Equatorial Current, the western part of the subtropical gyre and over the West European Basin. These results are robust to both the seasonal variability and to method parameters such as the size of the analyzed domain.