ARGO

The origins of ARGO (Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography) can be found in the 1990-1997 World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE). WOCE is part of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and set out to collect an unprecedented set of observations.

The research program is based on the use of profiling floats that are battery-powered autonomous floats that spend most of their life drifting at depth. At typically 10-day intervals the floats pump rise to the surface while measuring temperature and salinity data that are then transmitted via satellite.

Float reliability has improved almost every year and the float lifetime has been extended. ARGO has developed a large user community in universities, government labs and meteorological/climate analysis/forecasting centers. The need for global ARGO observations will continue indefinitely into the future, though the technologies and design of the array will evolve as better instruments are built, models are improved, and more is learned about ocean variability.

ARGO deployments began in 2000 and by November 2007 the millionth profile was collected. Today, even with more than 3600 active floats, there are still some areas of the ocean that are over-populated while others have gaps that need to be filled with additional floats. Today's (July 2015) tally of floats is shown in the figure below. To maintain the ARGO array, national programs need to provide about 800 floats per year.

Figure 1. Positions of the floats that have delivered data within the last 30 days.

With over 3200 floats reporting free, ARGO provides a relevant, global ocean data set. The temperature, salinity and velocity data from ARGO can teach everything from basic concepts, like the temperature of the ocean and how to read graphs, to more complicated ones like analyzing ocean data over time and climate change issues.

More details can be found on the official ARGO web site: http://nettuno.ogs.trieste.it/sire/medargo/active/it_table_out.php?live=*