I bet most of you have never heard about Argo, an ambitious scientific project about the observation of our oceans. This project is endorsed by 18 countries and just reached a milestone: there are today more than 1,500 robotic floats reporting about salinity changes or predicting El Niño events, among other ones. This news release from the University of California at San Diego says that the Argo floats, which are autonomous ocean-traveling robots programmed to sink more than a mile below the ocean surface, are helping scientists all over the world to look at the future of our whole planet. And in 2007, when the deployment is completed, 3,000 underwater robots will help us to better understand the changes in our climate. Read more.
Even in a press release, you can find some real facts.
Researchers with the international Argo program announced they have reached the point where 1,500 ocean-traveling float instruments -- half the target 3,000-float array -- are now operating. This marks an important milestone in the program’s mission to capture valuable data around the globe.
The Argo floats, which are robotically programmed to record and transmit data, are uniquely positioned to provide important information about climate and weather phenomena. Other applications of Argo information include: ocean heat storage and climate change; ocean salinity changes due to rainfall; ocean-driven events such as El Niño; impacts of ocean temperature on fisheries and regional ecosystems; interactions between the ocean and monsoons; and how the oceans drive hurricanes and typhoons.
If your screen as enough pixels, you should see above a cross section of one float (left) (Credit: Southampton Oceanographic Centre) and one of the three models of floats, the PROVOR, shortly before recovery by the Japanese coastguard vessel Takuyo (right) (Credit: Scripps/UCSD Argo information). You can find many more pictures in this picture gallery on the Scripps/UCSD Argo information site.
With Uncle George in the stern, and Tom in the bows, each using a spruce pole about twelve feet long, pointed with iron, and poling on the same side, we shot up the rapids like a salmon, the water rushing and roaring around, so that only a practiced eye could distinguish a safe course, or tell what was deep water and what rocks, frequently grazing the latter on one or both sides, with a hundred as narrow escapes as ever the argo had in passing through the Symplegades. I, who had had some experience in boating, had never experienced any half so exhilarating before.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA), provides additional information and pictures in this story.
"This was just a dream back in 1998," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, a NOAA administrator. "Today, the dream is a reality and these devices prove that a global network of robotic instruments can provide the information we need to enhance our understanding of climate, weather and our oceans."
And if you like acronyms, you'll appreciate this quote.
Argo is a major contributor to the World Climate Research Programme's Climate Variability and Predictability Experiment (CLIVAR) project and to the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE). The Argo array is part of the Global Climate Observing System/Global Ocean Observing System (GCOS/GOOS).
Sources: University of California, San Diego, news release, November 30, 2004; and various websites
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
Environment
Geosciences
Networking
Robotics.