Search the data

What is Argo?

Argo is a collaborative international partnership that for more than 20 years continuously collects information from across the global oceans. Argo fleet consists of almost 4,000 active autonomous profiling floats that drift with the deep ocean currents, moving up and down from the surface to deep ocean within a 10-day period measuring the core (pressure, temperature and salinity) and biogeochemical (BGC) properties of the ocean (Roemmich et al., 2019; Wong et al., 2020).

Schematic representation of the Argo float measurements
Global representation of operational Argo floats coverage. Argo fleet shows separation by characteristic networks.

Argo data continue to have a remarkable impact on ocean and climate services, predictions and research, enabling ground-breaking developments in understanding ocean ecosystems, forecasting ocean productivity, and constraining the global carbon and energy budgets. Through the data system, Argo provides fundamental physical observations with broad societally valuable applications, built on the cost-efficient and robust technologies of autonomous profiling floats. Moreover, these observations are crucial in the development of policies and legislation to protect vulnerable areas of our coasts and to better recognise patterns and trends in forecasting future changes (Willis, 2015; Roemmich et al., 2022).

UK Argo float deployment
Find more about Argo project in: