February 15th lecture

Question 1

How do the floats work on the ARGO probes?

Answer 1

• They can pump fluid from an external bladder to the interior of the float and vice-versa.
• this pumping action changes the volume of water displacement by the float
• This makes the flat either denser or lighter, allowing it to sink or rise through the water column.

Question 2

What are the goals of the ARGO program?

Answer 2

• to have 3000 profiling floats spanning the global ocean.
• provide improved spatial coverage, greater depth, better data quality, velocity, salinity, sound speed, density as temperature readings.

Question 3

How deep down can ARGO read tempature? how often does it read tempature?

Answer 3

2000m

every 10 days

Question 4

ARGO being able to gather sound speed, allows us to then further understand what about the ocean?

Answer 4

The density of different ocean layers.

Question 5

What are the 3 big applications of the ARGO program?

Answer 5

• Understanding the present climate and the ocean’s role in the coupled climate system (storage and transport of heat, mass and salt).

• Improved seasonal-to-interannual climate
prediction. Global profiles of temperature and salinity.

• Interpreting global sea level observations from Jason altimetric data.