The Argo Program: Observing the Global Oceans with Profiling Floats

Roemmich, Dean; Johnson, Gregory C.; Riser, Stephen C.; Davis, Russ E.; Gilson, John; Owens, W. Brechner; Garzoli, Silvia L.; Schmid, Claudia; Ignaszewski, Mark

doi:10.5670/oceanog.2009.36

Cited by 524 publications

(366 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…One might think that existing Argo float data (41) could fill this void. However, a majority of Argo floats used Argos satellite communications, which necessitate long drift times on the sea surface during data uploads.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying dispersal from hydrothermal vent fields in the western Pacific Ocean

Mitarai

Watanabe

Nakajima

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

104

150

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Hydrothermal vent fields in the western Pacific Ocean are mostly distributed along spreading centers in submarine basins behind convergent plate boundaries. Larval dispersal resulting from deep-ocean circulations is one of the major factors influencing gene flow, diversity, and distributions of vent animals. By combining a biophysical model and deep-profiling float experiments, we quantify potential larval dispersal of vent species via ocean circulation in the western Pacific Ocean. We demonstrate that vent fields within back-arc basins could be well connected without particular directionality, whereas basin-to-basin dispersal is expected to occur infrequently, once in tens to hundreds of thousands of years, with clear dispersal barriers and directionality associated with ocean currents. The southwest Pacific vent complex, spanning more than 4,000 km, may be connected by the South Equatorial Current for species with a longer-than-average larval development time. Depending on larval dispersal depth, a strong western boundary current, the Kuroshio Current, could bridge vent fields from the Okinawa Trough to the Izu-Bonin Arc, which are 1,200 km apart. Outcomes of this study should help marine ecologists estimate gene flow among vent populations and design optimal marine conservation plans to protect one of the most unusual ecosystems on Earth.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying dispersal from hydrothermal vent fields in the western Pacific Ocean

Mitarai

Watanabe

Nakajima

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

104

150

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The ARGO programme has been a substantial new data source about the global ocean since its deployment, including in the Southern Ocean [13]. Recent advances in float-based measurement platforms make it possible to equip floats with sensors of pH, nutrients and oxygen [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An observing system simulation for Southern Ocean carbon dioxide uptake

Majkut

Carter

Frölicher

et al. 2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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The Southern Ocean is critically important to the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO 2 . Up to half of the excess CO 2 currently in the ocean entered through the Southern Ocean. That uptake helps to maintain the global carbon balance and buffers transient climate change from fossil fuel emissions. However, the future evolution of the uptake is uncertain, because our understanding of the dynamics that govern the Southern Ocean CO 2 uptake is incomplete. Sparse observations and incomplete model formulations limit our ability to constrain the monthly and annual uptake, interannual variability and long-term trends. Float-based sampling of ocean biogeochemistry provides an opportunity for transforming our understanding of the Southern Ocean CO 2 flux. In this work, we review current estimates of the CO 2 uptake in the Southern Ocean and projections of its response to climate change. We then show, via an observational system simulation experiment, that float-based sampling provides a significant opportunity for measuring the mean fluxes and monitoring the mean uptake over decadal scales.

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“…Through combining the available ocean observations with OGCMs, ORAs may offer new insights into the processes of vertical heat re-arrangement and have also be used to derive estimates of Earth's energy imbalance (Loeb et al 2012;Trenberth et al 2014;Smith et al 2015). Despite the recent development of the Argo network of profiling floats (Roemmich et al 2009), historical observations of ocean temperature are sparse in time and space (Purkey and Johnson 2010;Desbruyères et al 2014), often limited to a particular depth range, and may require correction for instrumental biases (Abraham et al 2013). These issues mean that there are substantial-and difficult to quantify-uncertainties in our knowledge of ocean heat content change during the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ocean heat content variability and change in an ensemble of ocean reanalyses

et al. 2015

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regions of the Pacific and Indian Oceans where the interannual variability of the ensemble mean exceeds ensemble spread, indicating that OHC variations are well-constrained by the available observations over the period [1993][1994][1995][1996][1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. At deeper levels, the ORAs are less well-constrained by observations with the largest differences across the ensemble mostly associated with areas of high eddy kinetic energy, such as the Southern Ocean and boundary current regions. Spatial patterns of OHC change for the period 1997-2009 show good agreement in the upper 300 m and are characterized by a strong dipole pattern in the Pacific Ocean. There is less agreement in the patterns of change at deeper levels, potentially linked to differences in the representation of ocean dynamics, such as water mass formation processes. However, the Atlantic and Southern Oceans Abstract Accurate knowledge of the location and magnitude of ocean heat content (OHC) variability and change is essential for understanding the processes that govern decadal variations in surface temperature, quantifying changes in the planetary energy budget, and developing constraints on the transient climate response to external forcings. We present an overview of the temporal and spatial characteristics of OHC variability and change as represented by an ensemble of dynamical and statistical ocean reanalyses (ORAs). Spatial maps of the 0-300 m layer show large This paper is a contribution to the special issue on Ocean estimation from an ensemble of global ocean reanalyses, consisting of papers from the Ocean Reanalyses Intercomparsion Project (ORAIP), coordinated by CLIVAR-GSOP and GODAE OceanView. The special issue also contains specific studies using single reanalysis systems. The current work emphasizes the need to better observe the deep ocean, both for providing observational constraints for future ocean state estimation efforts and also to develop improved models and data assimilation methods.

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The Argo Program: Observing the Global Oceans with Profiling Floats

Cited by 524 publications

References 9 publications

Quantifying dispersal from hydrothermal vent fields in the western Pacific Ocean

Quantifying dispersal from hydrothermal vent fields in the western Pacific Ocean

An observing system simulation for Southern Ocean carbon dioxide uptake

Ocean heat content variability and change in an ensemble of ocean reanalyses

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