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Your location: Home / Final GODAE Symposium / Invited papers / 4.1 DR abstract

4.1 Argo: the challenge of continuing 10 years of progress

Author/co-authors: Dean Roemmich¹ and the Argo Steering Team*

*Present members of the Argo Steering Team are (alphabetically):
M. Belbeoch¹, P.J.V. Belchi², H. Freeland³, W.J. Gould⁴, F. Grant⁵, M. Ignaszewski⁶, B. King⁴, B. Klein⁷, K.A. Mork⁸, W.B. Owens⁹, S. Pouliquen¹⁰, M. Ravichandran¹¹, S. Riser¹², D. Roemmich¹³, A. Sterl¹⁴, T. Suga¹⁵, M.-S. Suk¹⁶, P. Sutton¹⁷, V. Thierry¹⁰, P.-Y. LeTraon¹⁰, S. Wijffels¹⁸, J. Xu¹⁹

Abstract

In only ten years, the Argo Program has grown from an idea into a functioning global observing system for the subsurface ocean. More than 3000 Argo floats now cover all the oceans from the seasonal ice of the Antarctic to the tropics to the Arctic seas. With these instruments operating on 10-day cycles, the array provides 9000 temperature/salinity/depth profiles every month that are quickly available via the GTS or the internet. Argo is recognized as a major advance for oceanography, and a success for Argo's parent programs, GODAE and CLIVAR, and for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. The value of Argo data in ocean data assimilation (ODA) and other applications is being demonstrated, and will grow as the dataset is extended in time and as experience of using the data set leads to new applications. The spatial coverage and quality of the Argo dataset are improving, with consideration being given to sampling under seasonal ice at higher latitudes, in additional marginal seas and to greater depths. Argo data products are being developed, and Argo data are being tested to confirm their consistency with related satellite and in situ datasets. Maintenance of the Argo Program for the next decade and longer is needed for a broad range of climate and oceanographic research and for many operational applications in ocean state estimation and prediction.

Keywords: Temperature, salinity, steric sea level, ocean circulation, climatology, air-sea interaction

(Last Updated: 13-10-2008)