Autonomous floats for the ARGO program

Argo is a global real-time ocean observing network with a fleet of autonomous floats measuring the properties of seawater and sending data in real time via satellite communications. The floats can regu-late their buoyancy and therefore collect measurements of profiles of water properties. This makes them unique compared to other sustained observation systems which measure only at fixed depths (buoys or remote sensing). The program represents a fleet of about 4000 autonomous floats, deployed all over the world ocean. They carry an array of sensors with the core being temperature, and salinity, while other sensors are often added to cover other parameters such as dissolved oxygen, phytoplankton fluorescence, or-ganic matter fluorescence, nitrate, particle scattering and irradiance. The data is made freely available to all via coordinated global ARGO data centers. Just as weather balloons provide profiles of atmos-pheric conditions for weather forecasting, the ARGO program delivers ocean properties for monitor-ing and forecasting ocean conditions (operational modelling) and also supporting climate research and modelling. Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has initiated Denmark participation in ARGO via a Research in-frastructure grant from the Ministry of Higher Education and Science. The initiative has now been tak-en over by Danish Centre for Marine Research (DCMR), the secretariate of which is at DTU. DCMR is a national virtual centre funded by the national budget, with representation from all institutions in-volved in marine research in the Kingdom of Denmark.