Oceanography is now engaged in the ambitious enterprise of designing and installing a global ocean observing system to provide unprecedented observation of seasonal to decadal variability (OCEANOBS99, 1999). This will enable major advances in understanding and prediction of climate along with other practical applications. The in situ backbone of the global system, indeed the only element that will produce a global subsurface dataset, is the Argo array of profiling floats (Argo Science Team, 1998, 1999a, 1999b).

Roemmich, D., and W.B. Owens. 2000. The Argo Project: Global ocean observations for understanding and prediction of climate variability. Oceanography 13(2):45–50, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2000.33.

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