ESSO - Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services
(An Autonomous Body under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India)
Argo
Argo is an international program that calls for the deployment of 3,000 free drifting profiling floats, distributed over the global oceans, which will measure the temperature and salinity in the upper 1,000 to 2,000 m of the ocean providing 100,000 T/S profiles and reference velocity measurements per year. This will allow continuous monitoring of the climate state of the ocean, with all data being relayed and made publicly available within hours after collection. Argo is an element of: Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), Climate Variability and Predictability Experiment (CLIVAR), and Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE). The Argo Information Centre http://www.argo.net/ is the official site for information about the Argo program.
Official versions of Argo data are available from the Global Data Assembly Centers (GDACs), GODAE and IFREMER:
http://www.usgodae.org/argo/argo.html
http://www.coriolis.eu.org//cdc/argo.htm
INCOIS has developed an automated system to receive the data from the GDAC for Indian Ocean floats. These data, as well as a variety of Indian Ocean products, are available at the INCOIS website:
http://www.incois.gov.in/Incois/argo/argo_webGIS_intro.jsp
The APDRC provides global Argo data via an EPIC server for space-time-float sorting, viewing and downloading. It also provides a surface and deep velocity data set through 2005 and the associated technical report, YoMaHa'05. The APDRC website is:
http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu
There is a well coordinated and documented data management system for data from Argo floats. Documentation is available at the Argo Information Centre and the GDACs. In general, the real time data are QCed by the respective float deploying countries. They then make the data available on the GTS and send the data to the GDACs. The PI and national DACs then have the responsibility for delayed mode QC. The files at the GDACs are then updated with the new information and data.
