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A large team of oceanographers is again exploring ‘Lost City,’ an hydrothermal vent field located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which was discovered in 2000 and named like this because of the myth of Atlantis. But this time, the oceanographers are not on a ship. Most of them are in a room at the University of Washington in Seattle. And according to this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, they’re using high-speed Internet connections to control robotic vehicles exploring the deep Atlantic Ocean thousands of miles away. Thanks to satellites, the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) Argus and Hercules can transmit videos back to Seattle in real time. After analysis, the scientists can move the ROVs to specific areas of interest without having their feet wet. Read more…

Before going further, let’s look at some images.

The diagram below shows “how video and data will be transmitted between the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, via satellite and Internet2, to the Inner Space Center at URI, the University of Washington, and other participating sites” (Credit: Todd Viola, Phil Scheuer, Immersion Presents).

Here is a link to a larger version of this diagram.

The photo below shows the Hercules submarine vehicle approaching “a ghostly, white, carbonate spire in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field, about 2500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean” (Credit: IFE, URI-IAO, UW, Lost City science party, and NOAA).

And on this one, you can see a beautiful 3 ft high, actively venting carbonate structure resembling a snow-covered Christmas tree” (Credit: IFE, URI-IAO, UW, Lost City science party, and NOAA).

You’ll find tons of other pictures in this photo gallery available from the Lost City section of the Jason Foundation for Education web site. But be prepared to spend quite a time: they have amassed lots of interesting stuff on this site.

Now, let’s read the introduction of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article.

Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet’s most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control.

“This is how the science is going to be done,” said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer.

In 2000, Kelley was part of the expedition which discovered a huge collection of limestone towers in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and some of these hydrothermal vent towers were hundreds of feet high.

Five years ago, the expedition used a manned vehicle. But in 2005, the scientists are in Seattle, operating unmanned vehicles 2,500 miles away in real time.

Yesterday, Kelley and her colleagues were in Seattle and also “virtually” back at the Lost City to demonstrate how robotics and information technology can transform deep-ocean exploration. What once required dangerous and time-limited manned exploits can now be done by remote control on a ship deck or in an office thousands of miles away.

This news release from the University of Washington gives additional details.

Only four scientists are with University of Rhode Island oceanographer Bob Ballard aboard the Ronald H. Brown, a research vessel operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the expedition’s major sponsor. The other 21 are with University of Washington oceanographer Deborah Kelley in a classroom on the UW campus that has been outfitted so scientists can direct sampling efforts and can be in constant contact with pilots and navigators on the Brown.

“Having most of the members of an oceanographic science party on land has never been tried. The approach will provide an opportunity for a much larger number of researchers to explore the oceans,” Kelley says.

If you still have some time to spare to know more about this expedition, please visit The Lost City 2005, a site maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA).

Sources: Tom Paulson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 29, 2005; and various web sites

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Scientists periodically claim that they have found the lost continent (or island) of Atlantis, even if it’s not even sure it has ever existed. In a conference recently held in the Greek island of Milos, several researchers presented the reasons why Atlantis could have been located in Greece, Malta, Morocco, and even in Ireland, Israel or India. But both Nature and the Geology blog from About.com agree that the most serious candidate is the former island in the Spanish Gulf of Cadiz known today as Spartel Bank. This small island, about 15 kilometers across, which was located near the “Pillars of Hercules” mentioned by Plato, could have been swallowed up by an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, about 10,000 years ago. Even if this makes sense from a geological point of view, this doesn’t mean Atlantis is anything more than a — fascinating — legend.

Lets’s start with Nature.

In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzané gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

The top of this isle lies some 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, having plunged beneath the waves at the end of the most recent ice age as melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise.

Geological evidence has shown that a large earthquake and a tsunami hit this island some 12,000 years ago, at roughly the location and time indicated in Plato’s writings.

And here are some other details from the Geology blog of About.com.

[About 10,000 years ago,] sea level was more than 100 meters below its present elevation and Spartel Bank was an island. In fact, Gutscher’s new mapping of the site shows that it would have been a rather small island at that time, smaller than previously thought. But things change when we add the effects of large subduction earthquakes. As we all know from the Sumatra quake of 2004, large areas of land sink by several meters and more during these events. If we restore the effects of great earthquakes, which Gutscher estimates as recurring every 2000 years or so, then the island would have been higher and larger.

Gutscher proposes that an exceptionally large quake could have dropped Spartel/Atlantis by 10 meters at once, while tsunami waves of 10 meters or greater height would have obliterated any human structures and left the island unrecognizable. A few more subduction earthquakes would have sunk the remaining islets beneath the sea, leaving treacherous muddy shallows, well before Plato’s time.

As it was mentioned above, Gutscher’s latest research work has been published by Geology in its August 2005 issue (Vol. 33, No. 8, pp. 685-688). Here is a link to the abstract of this paper named “Destruction of Atlantis by a great earthquake and tsunami? A geological analysis of the Spartel Bank hypothesis.”

This paper was presented during the Atlantis 2005 conference, held on July 11-13, 2005, in Milos Island, Greece.

Many other papers were also presented and here is a link to all the abstracts. Besides the papers claiming that Atlantis was in one part of the world or another, some of these papers must have been fun to listen to. Here are some examples: “Interpreting Myths: Catastrophism and New Catastrophism” (abstract #29) or “The Novelty of the Atlantis Myth in the Light of Freudian Interpretation” (abstract #9).

Here are some short excerpts from this last paper, presented by Yair Schlein, from the Open University, Israel.

The Atlantis myth illustrates the Ideal regime and serves as a starting point to the description of the state “pathology”, that is to say, the degeneration process of the state that differs from the “physiology” of state that depicts the political structure in a given time. In other words, the myth expresses the inherent causes for the deterioration of the polis.

Freud too, in his book “Civilization and its Discontents”, described society as a self-destructive. The analogous perceptions of the life of an individual to the structure of the state, and the similar characteristics Plato and Freud attributed to the state are surprising.

And for more information on this subject, please read the excellent collection of resources from Wikipedia about Atlantis.

Sources: Andreas von Bubnoff, Nature, July 22, 2005; Andrew Alden, Geology, About.com, July 14, 2005; and various web sites

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Geophysicists from the University of Colorado at Boulder have developed a new imaging technique to visualize the movement of rocks below the earth’s surface. And they applied this technique to the Himalaya to discover how the Indian plate moves as it passes beneath the Himalayan plateau. They used 29 broadband seismometers installed in Nepal and Tibet to record about 1,700 earthquakes between 2001 and 2003. Now, they think their technique can be used to assess earthquake hazards, even it can’t predict them accurately. Read more…

“We imaged the boundary between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates by developing a new technique that highlights strongly deformed rocks beneath Earth’s surface, and applied it to data we collected with a network of temporary seismic sensors deployed in Nepal and Tibet,” said Vera Schulte-Pelkum, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

The network included 29 broadband seismometers operated by the CU-Boulder and SUNY Binghamton teams. About 1,700 earthquakes from as far away as Europe, Alaska and Japan were recorded during an 18-month period starting in 2001. The study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation.

Below is a map showing where the broadband seismometers in Nepal and Tibet were located (Credit: CIRES).

[This location map has two parts:] (a) Overview map with topography. The extent of the study area map in (b) is outlined in red. The location of INDEPTH profiles is indicated in blue. (b) Topography map of the study area. Stations deployed for this study are shown in black (three stations with little to no data owing to equipment problems or vandalism are shown in white). Hypocentres relocated with our network are colour coded by depth (scale in km).

The scientists found a shear zone above the base of the Indian crust beneath the Himalaya.

Shear zones are similar to faults, Schulte-Pelkum said. Faults are brittle structures at or near the surface of the earth, while shear zones are found at depths of 10 miles or more where heat causes more ductile, or flowing, rock movement.

In subduction zones such as where India and Asia collide, however, earthquakes along brittle faults can occur at depth because rock temperatures are cooler, the researchers said.

Of course, this will not help to forecast earthquakes — only to understand them better.

With the team’s new method, geophysicists can study the deep crust and determine the direction rocks are being sheared. The shearing is similar to a deck of cards being spread out on a table, said Sheehan, an associate professor of geological sciences at CU-Boulder and a CIRES researcher. “We can see how the deep crust has moved. Seeing where these structures are and how they have moved in the subsurface helps us better understand where local hazards are.

“If we can more accurately calculate the subsurface geometries, we can improve our estimations of how the ground will shake during an earthquake. We can’t predict earthquakes, but we can get a better idea of how an earthquake’s energy will radiate,” explained Sheehan.

The research work has been published by Nature on June 30, 2005 under the name “Imaging the Indian subcontinent beneath the Himalaya.” Here is a link to the first paragraph and this is an excerpt.

Here we report seismic images both of the decollement at the base of the Himalaya and of the Moho (the boundary between crust and mantle) at the base of the Indian crust. A significant finding is that strong seismic anisotropy develops above the decollement in response to shear processes that are taken up as slip in great earthquakes at shallower depths.

If you want to read the full paper (PDF format, 4 pages, 574 KB), you need to be a subscriber to Nature or purchase the article for $30. The above illustration comes from this paper.

Sources: University of Colorado at Boulder news release, June 29, 2005; and various web sites

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The GLOBCOVER project, started by the European Space Agency (ESA), has a very simple goal. It will create the most detailed portrait of the Earth’s land surface with a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map. The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite. To create this sharp map, the GLOBCOVER project will analyze about 20 terabytes of data gathered by the European satellite. When it’s completed, the GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, “including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.” Read more…

Let’s start with a couple of images.

You can download larger versions of the above pictures here.

And here are some more details about the GLOBCOVER project picked from the ESA news release.

It will be a unique depiction of the face of our planet in 2005, broken down into more than 20 separate land cover classes. The completed GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.

Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument is being systematically used in Full Resolution Mode for the project, acquiring images with a spatial resolution of 300 metres, with an average 150 minutes of acquisitions occurring daily.

The estimate is that up to 20 terabytes of imagery will be needed to mosaic together the final worldwide GLOBCOVER map — an amount of data equivalent to the contents of 20 million books. The image acquisition strategy is based around regional climate patterns to minimise cloud or snow cover. Multiple acquisitions are planned for some regions to account for seasonal variations in land cover.

For more information about the GLOBCOVER project, please click here or there.

Sources: European Space Agency, May 5, 2005; and various websites

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Ocean-diving gliders have a large autonomy, mainly because they don’t have propellers. And they are used to gather oceanographic data such as temperature or salinity at a fraction of the cost of research vessels. Several Seagliders built at the University of Washington (UW) just broke endurance records. Two of these Seagliders, which are 1.8 m long and weigh 52 kg, were launched last September between California and Hawaii and reached the island of Kauai after 191 days in a trip of 1,860 miles. Both Seagliders did more than 500 dives down to 1,000 m during their trips. When a Seaglider reaches the surface, where it stays for only five minutes, it determines its position via GPS, uploads its data and downloads its new instructions via satellite. Meanwhile, two other Seagliders are still somewhere in the Labrador Sea for more than 193 days now and have yet to be retrieved. Read more…

Here are the facts about these Seagliders.

Two ocean-diving gliders built at the University of Washington were retrieved late last month near the Hawaiian island of Kauai after setting a world record by traveling a quarter of the way across the Pacific Ocean. Two other UW gliders, awaiting retrieval from the Labrador Sea, have set another world endurance record with a deployment of 193 days as of early April.

The Seagliders used in the Pacific Ocean were deployed in the water mid-way between California and Hawaii last September. They traveled the Pacific for 191 days, covering 1,860 miles. During that time one made 599 dives and the other 559.

And here are more details about how the Seagliders work.

A Seaglider can dive from the surface down 3,300 feet and back up every 3 to 9 hours. It remains at the surface 5 minutes to transmit ocean data that it has collected, relay its position and receive instructions via the Iridium satellite phone network, before diving again. It travels at half a knot, driven not by a spinning propeller but by buoyancy control: a hydraulic system moves oil in and out of an external rubber bladder to force the glider up or down through the ocean. Moving its battery pack causes it to pitch its nose up or down or roll its wings to change compass heading.

And what are they used for?

The temperature, salinity and oxygen data gathered by the Seagliders will help the North Pacific Acoustics Laboratory scientists better understand acoustic propagation — how sound is affected as it moves through the ocean. Acoustics can be used to probe such things as long-term ocean temperature changes and climate variability, and the role of internal waves in ocean mixing, says Bruce Howe, oceanographer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

Gliders also could be used to monitor changes in the world’s oceans because of storms, such as hurricanes, and other natural events, such as El Niño. Sonar and other sensing devices mounted on gliders may one day routinely scan harbors and seaports for explosive mines or detect divers in areas where they don’t belong.

For more information, you should visit the Seaglider home page. You’ll find its specifications, an image gallery and animations (in QuickTime format).

Sources: University of Washington news release, April 5, 2005; and various websites

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A surprising new study from NASA reveals that a new trend about the evolution of phytoplankton in our oceans is emerging. Instead of declining globally by 6 percent between the 1980s and 1990s, phytoplankton levels are now growing, by more than 4 percent between 1998 and 2003. But according to the data gathered by NASA satellites, this evolution is not uniform. The increase is by far larger near the coasts, where the ocean floor is less than 200 meters and where phytoplankton levels grew by more than 10 percent in the last 5 years. At a moment where everyone is concerned by the global warming effect, this is very good news because one of the things phytoplankton does is absorbing carbon dioxide.

Let’s start our today’s story with more details about the importance of phytoplankton.

The tiny ocean plants help regulate our atmosphere and the health of our oceans. Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen generated by plants on Earth. They also can soften the impacts of climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. In addition, phytoplankton serve as the base of the ocean food chain, so their abundance determines the overall health of ocean ecosystems.

Now, what are the results of this new study from NASA?

The researchers used NASA satellite data from 1998 to 2003 to show that phytoplankton amounts have increased globally by more than 4 percent. These increases have mainly occurred along the coasts. No significant changes were seen in phytoplankton concentrations within the global open oceans, but phytoplankton levels declined in areas near the center of the oceans, the mid-ocean gyres.

The above images don’t really show it, but ocean colors also have changed.

Mid-ocean gyres are “ocean deserts”, which can only support low amounts of phytoplankton. When viewed by satellite, these phytoplankton-deprived regions look deep-blue, while in aquatic regions where plant life thrives, the water appears greener.

“The ocean deserts are getting bluer and the coasts are getting greener,” said Watson Gregg, an oceanographer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Md. “The study suggests there may be changes occurring in the biology of the oceans, especially in the coast regions.”

This evolution is so recent that the researchers are cautious before giving conclusions.

“We don’t know the causes of these coastal increases,” said Gregg. “The trends could indicate improved health of the ecosystems as a whole, or they could be a sign of nutrient stress.” Causes of nutrient stress include land run-off that deposits agricultural fertilizers and other nutrients in the oceans. The run-off can promote large algal blooms that can deplete the water of oxygen.

For more technical information, this study has been published on February 8, 2005 by Geophysical Research Letters under the title “Recent trends in global ocean chlorophyll.” Here is a link to the abstract.

A 6-year time series of remotely-sensed global ocean chlorophyll was evaluated using linear regression analysis to assess recent trends. Global ocean chlorophyll has increased 4.1% (P < 0.05). Most of the increase has occurred in coastal regions, defined as bottom depth < 200 m, where an increase of 10.4% was observed. The main contributors to the increase were the Patagonian Shelf, Bering Sea, and the eastern Pacific, southwest African, and Somalian coasts. Although the global open ocean exhibited no significant change, 4 of the 5 mid-ocean gyres (Atlantic and Pacific) showed declines in chlorophyll over the 6 years. In all but the North Atlantic gyre, these were associated with significant increases in sea surface temperature in at least one season. These results suggest that changes are occurring in the biology of the global oceans.

Sources: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center news release, via EurekAlert!, March 3, 2005; and various websites

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It took four years to NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to fully process the data gathered during the Space Shuttle Endeavour Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) in February 2000. Unlike previous Earth’s maps, this one shows “detailed swaths of Earth’s topography previously obscured by persistent cloudiness,” according to NASA News. The latest images delivered by NASA include Australia, New Zealand and many islands in the South Pacific. NASA adds that these new maps are vital to mitigate “the effects of future disasters such as the Indian Ocean tsunami.” I don’t really know if this statement is true. Mother Nature is certainly stronger than NASA. Anyway, don’t miss this fly-around movie above New Zealand (Quicktime format, 2 minutes, 6.42 MB). Read more…

Below are three images of the islands of Bora Bora, Tahaa and Raiatea, French Polynesia (top to bottom) taken from space (Credit: NASA/JPL/NGA). Here are two links to more details and to a larger version of these images.

This display compares three differing “views from space” of these islands. On the left, an image from the Landsat 7 satellite shows the islands as they might have appeared to an astronaut in orbit in 1999 (but a little sharper and with atmospheric haze suppressed). In the middle is an image created from data gathered by the third-generation Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR-C), flown in 1994. On the right is a graphic illustrating elevation data gathered by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) in 2000.

The Landsat satellite cannot ’see’ through clouds, almost always present on this kind of islands, while the SIR-C shows the waves and other effects of winds upon the ocean surface. But the STRM shows a detailed elevation model and can help to in understand and interact with our environment.

After watching these local images, it’s time to look at the big picture. Here is what NASA News says about this new Earth’s map.

The digital elevation maps encompass 80 percent of Earth’s landmass. They reveal for the first time large, detailed swaths of Earth’s topography previously obscured by persistent cloudiness. The data will benefit scientists, engineers, government agencies and the public with an ever-growing array of uses.

“This is among the most significant science missions the Shuttle has ever performed, and it’s probably the most significant mapping mission of any single type ever,” said Dr. Michael Kobrick, mission project scientist of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

According to NASA, this technology could also be used for space exploration.

SRTM data are being used for applications ranging from land use planning to “virtual” Earth exploration. “Future missions using similar technology could monitor changes in Earth’s topography over time, and even map the topography of other planets,” said Dr. John LaBrecque, manager of NASA’s Solid Earth and Natural Hazards Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington.

Sources: NASA News, January 6, 2005; and various NASA websites

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Observations from several satellites launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and other organizations have been gathered to produce the most detailed heat map of the Mediterranean. With a resolution of two square kilometers for an area of about 3 million square kilometers, an equivalent ground-based map would have needed almost 1.5 million thermometers put into the water. This ESA news release adds that sea surface temperature (SST) is an important variable for weather forecasting and for checking the rate of global warming. In fact, as water takes longer than air to warm up or cool down, the top layer of our oceans is basically acting as a reservoir of heat. Did you know that “the top two meters of ocean alone store all the equivalent energy contained in the atmosphere?” I didn’t, so read more…

Before going further, let’s look at this best-ever Mediterranean heat map.

This ultra high-resolution sea surface temperature map of the Mediterranean could only have been made with satellites. Any equivalent ground-based map would need almost a million and a half thermometers placed into the water simultaneously, one for every two square kilometres of sea.

This most detailed ever heat map of all 2 965 500 square kilometres of the Mediterranean, the world’s largest inland sea is being updated on a daily basis as part of ESA’s Medspiration project.

With sea surface temperature (SST) an important variable for weather forecasting and increasingly seen as a key indicator of climate change, the idea behind Medspiration is to combine data from multiple satellite systems to produce a robust set of sea surface data for assimilation into ocean forecasting models of the waters around Europe and also the whole of the Atlantic Ocean.

But why is this so important to precisely measure sea surface temperatures?

The temperature of the surface of the ocean is an important physical property that strongly influences the transfer of heat energy, momentum, water vapour and gases between the ocean and the atmosphere.

And because water takes a long time to warm up or cool down the sea surface functions as an enormous reservoir of heat: the top two metres of ocean alone store all the equivalent energy contained in the atmosphere.

The whole of their waters store more than a thousand times this same value — climatologists sometimes refer to the oceans as the ‘memory’ of the Earth’s climate, and measuring SST on a long-term basis is the most reliable way to establish the rate of global warming.

Please read the full ESA’s news release for more details and references, but for your viewing pleasure, here is another great picture from the Atlantic ocean taken with one of the instruments of ESA’s Envisat.

Sources: European Space Agency news release, December 15, 2004

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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.

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

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