A method for correcting seal-borne oceanographic data and application to the estimation of regional sea ice thickness

Journal of Marine Systems (2018)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924796318300101?via%3Dihub

Mammal based instruments may provide a solution for measuring under sampled oceans, however they are subject to instrument-dependent offsets in absolute salinity.

We investigated a set of satellite-transmitted data collected by CTD-SRDLs mounted on Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii). The uncorrected salinity offset between devices was found to be up to 1.4 g kg−1, making uncorrected data unsuitable for some oceanographic studies.

A correction method was developed and a best-fit solution to the matrix of offsets in co-located pairs was found that reduced salinity offsets between the CTD-SRDLs. Our corrected data estimates of regional sea ice thickness were in agreement with direct sea ice thickness measurements from 2011.