The first Argo floats go into the water
Deployment of profiling floats under the Argo design began in 1999, following the Argo Steering Team's 1998 specification of a 3,000-float array on a three-degree grid between 60°S and 60°N. Before this, the temperature and salinity structure of the open ocean below the surface was known from ship sections separated by years and thousands of kilometres.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Argo Profiling Float Array · technology system · Global ocean · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Argo Program — array design, history and status
Argo float deployments began in 1999 under a 1998 design of 3,000 floats on a 3° grid between 60°S and 60°N; the 3,000-float target was reached in November 2007; the array now exceeds 4,000 floats and the OneArgo design extends it to 4,700 including about 1,000 biogeochemical floats. Read via search summaries of the Argo and NOAA/AOML pages; the pages themselves are on domains blocked to this run.
Argo Program / Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego · accessed 2026-08-08 · Partly verified
https://argo.ucsd.edu/ (Argo 3000 milestone page and FAQ)
Recorded on Argo Profiling Float Array
- The first Argo floats go into the water
- The Argo design array is completed
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The Argo design array is completed · 2007-11