Argo is a project that is conducted under the cooperation of international meteorological and oceanographic organizations, such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC), and other institutions including related governmental agencies of Japan.
During the period of the Argo project, approximately 3,000 Argo profiling floats (profiling devices) will be deployed into the world ocean with average spacing of about 300km.
The aim of the project is to build a real-time, high resolution monitoring system for upper and middle layers of the world ocean. The system consists of newly developed observation technologies, i.e. Argo profiling floats, satellite communication systems, and information processing technologies.
The ocean monitoring system will enable us to obtain the high quality data of upper and middle layers of the world ocean almost simultaneously with very high space-time resolution.
The data obtained will provide us with better understanding of large scale, on-going oceanic variations. The monitoring system will greately contribute to the study of interannual, decadal and interdecadal variations of the climate system. Thus we are hoping that it will bring in a substantial improvement in the performance of long-term weather forecast.