Argo

The international Argo project to establish a global network of profiling floats was initiated in 2000. In October 2007 it achieved its goal of 3000 operating floats. These are providing around 100,000 observations each year, throughout all the ice-free deep-ocean areas of the world. Around 800 floats will need to be deployed each year to maintain the 3000 float array.

This global array of profiling floats will result in the systematic measurement of the physical state of the upper ocean as well as enabling assimilation of data in near real-time.