Global ARGO Ocean Observation Program and the China ARGO Project

摘要

ARGO is the abbreviations of "Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography". It is a broad-scale ocean observation program initially put forward in 1998 by the meteorologists and oceanographers from USA, France and Japan etc. It is conceived that by about 5 years (2000-2004) to deploy 3000 free-drafting floats (called ARGO floats) in the global oceans, spaced about 300 kilometers apart and followed by satellite, to form a global ocean real-time observing system. This observing system can fast and exactly collect the temperature/salinity data of the 0-2000m upper layer in the global oceans, which distribution of the floats, in a sense, equals adding another 3000 "sounding balloon stations". This observing array undoubtedly will help people further understand the ocean's large-scale variation of sea conditions in real-time, enhance the forecasting accuracy of climate and ocean change, and decrease the threats from natural disasters of oceans and climate (such as hurricane, typhoon, tornado, hail, flood and drought, as well as storm tide and red tide).