Location of Argo floats in 2012

The broad-scale global array of temperature/salinity profiling floats, known as Argo, has already grown to be a major component of the ocean observing system. Argo is a standard to which other developing ocean observing systems can look to. For example, Argo offers ideas on various topics such as how to collaborate internationally, how to develop a data management system and how to change the way scientists think about collecting data. Deployments began in 2000 and continue today at the rate of about 800 per year.