ESSO - Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services

ARGO Long Term Archive

Argo is an internationally coordinated Project that requires international participation to ensure global coverage. Individual countries have established data centres to handle the data collected by profiling floats that their countries have contributed. Argo program needs to establish a unique centre that will archive long term float data. The U.S. National Oceanographic Data Centre volunteered to establish an Argo data repository for long-term archival of Argo data and information. In collaboration with the Global Data Centres, it will recover all the data available and provide a long-term access to Argo data. It will also act as the Global Data Centres backup. It will also generate regularly CD of the Argo archive for the users without Internet.

An effective data management methodology includes many components to ensure that the highest quality data moves from sensor to user to final archive in a timely manner. It should be noted that the definition of timely is user dependent ranging from a day or less for some operational users of Argo data to months for some research users. There is also the need to provide feedback between components to allow for reporting of problems and corrections to the system. Finally, there must be a way to measure the performance of the system to ensure it meets stated requirements. In order to facilitate the data transmission between the different components of the Argo Data Network, it is needed to rely on unique float identifier as well as unique data format for data distribution as well as common agreed quality control procedures either in real time and delayed mode.