These data were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Program and the national programs that contribute to it. (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu, http://argo.jcommops.org). The Argo Program is part of the Global Ocean Observing System.
Abstract
ARGO-ITALY is the Italian component of a worldwide in situ global observing system, based on autonomous profiling floats, surface drifters, gliders and ship-of-opportunity measurements. It is primarily focused on the Italian seas, and the Mediterranean and Black seas, and includes observations of temperature, salinity, currents and other water mass properties. The ARGO-ITALY objective is to provide a significant and sustained Italian contribution to the global ocean monitoring.
ARGO-ITALY contributes to international programs such as Argo and Euro-Argo (global monitoring of water properties with profiling floats), GDP (Global Drifter Program to measure near-surface temperature and currents), EGO (gliding vehicles to measure water properties) and SOOP (Ship-Of-Opportunity Program to temperature profiles) have been developed to monitor the entire World Ocean on a long term basis.
ARGO-ITALY is a cost-effective long-term monitoring system that will be a unique source of information to study the role of the oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea in particular, on the climate system. It provides the data required by operational ocean monitoring systems in order to improve significantly extended forecasts of the atmosphere and oceans. ARGO-ITALY contributes to programs of operational oceanography, such as MOON (Mediterranean Operational Oceanography Network) and MyOcean (FP7 European project) and is essential for the production of marine core and downstream services products of GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security). It is also an important component of GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems).