Advancing ocean monitoring and knowledge for societal benefit: the urgency to expand Argo to OneArgo by 2030

The ocean plays an essential role in regulating Earth’s climate, influencing weather conditions, providing sustenance for large populations, moderating anthropogenic climate change, encompassing massive biodiversity, and sustaining the global economy. Human activities are changing the oceans, stressing ocean health, threatening the critical services the ocean provides to society, with significant consequences for human well-being and safety, and economic prosperity. Effective and sustainable monitoring of the physical, biogeochemical state and ecosystem structure of the ocean, to enable climate adaptation, carbon management and sustainable marine resource management is urgently needed. The Argo program, a cornerstone of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), has revolutionized ocean observation by providing real-time, freely accessible global temperature and salinity data of the upper 2,000m of the ocean (Core Argo) using cost-effective simple robotics. For the past 25 years, Argo data have underpinned many ocean, climate and weather forecasting services, playing a fundamental role in safeguarding goods and lives. Argo data have enabled clearer assessments of ocean warming, sea level change and underlying driving processes, as well as scientific breakthroughs while supporting public awareness and education. Building on Argo’s success, OneArgo aims to greatly expand Argo’s capabilities by 2030, expanding to full-ocean depth, collecting biogeochemical parameters, and observing the rapidly changing polar regions. Providing a synergistic subsurface and global extension to several key space-based Earth Observation missions and GOOS components, OneArgo will enable biogeochemical and ecosystem forecasting and new long-term climate predictions for which the deep ocean is a key component. Driving forward a revolution in our understanding of marine ecosystems and the poorly-measured polar and deep oceans, OneArgo will be instrumental to assess sea level change, ocean carbon fluxes, acidification and deoxygenation. Emerging OneArgo applications include new views of ocean mixing, ocean bathymetry and sediment transport, and ecosystem resilience assessment. Implementing OneArgo requires about $100 million annually, a significant increase compared to present Argo funding. OneArgo is a strategic and cost-effective investment which will provide decision-makers, in both government and industry, with the critical knowledge needed to navigate the present and future environmental challenges, and safeguard both the ocean and human wellbeing for generations to come.

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. VT gratefully acknowledges financial support from the following projects and grants: the Equipex+ Argo-2030 project supported by the French government under the “Investissements d’avenir” program within France 2030 and managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under grant agreement no. ANR-21-ESRE-0019; the CPER Obsocean, co-funded by the European Union, Région Bretagne, Département du Finistère, Brest Métropole, and Ifremer; and the Euro-Argo ONE project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101188133. HC acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council (ERC) for the “REFINE—Robots Explore Plankton-drive Fluxes in the Marine Twilight Zone” project (grant agreement 834177) and from the Centre National d’Étude Spatiale (CNES) for the BGC-Argo TOSCA project. NZ acknowledges support from the NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program through Award NA20OAR4320278, and additional support from NSF (OCE-2242742) and Seabed2030 (UNH2042102). MS acknowledges support from the NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (NA20OAR4320278) and Seabed2030 (UNH2042102). SRJ, WBO, and SEW were supported by the NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program through CINAR Award grant #NA19OAR4320074. KJ acknowledges support from US National Science Foundation projects Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (NSF PLR-1425989, OPP-1936222, and OPP-2332379) and the Global Ocean Biogeochemical Array (NSF OCE-1946578), and support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. NK was supported by the Service National d'Observation (SNO) Argo France (INSU/CNRS/UBO). XX is supported by Laoshan Laboratory (LSKJ202201500). SS was supported National Centre for Earth Observation (UK). DR, JS, and MS acknowledge support from the NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (NA20OAR4320278), with MS also receiving support from Seabed2030 (UNH2042102). GCJ and JML were funded by the NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observation Program and NOAA Research. AJF was supported by the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and both AJF and RRR received support from the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Essential Data Acquisition Strategic Initiative on Remote Sensing through the Inflation Reduction Act. MSL acknowledges support from the Physical Oceanography Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation through grant OCE-1948335. The work of P.J.D. from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is supported by the Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) program area under the Earth and Environmental System Modeling (EESM) program within the Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD) of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science (OSTI). This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. DOE by LLNL under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 (LLNL IM Release#: LLNL-JRNL-2003708). RC and NP received support from the GEORGE project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme (grant agreement no. 101094716) and from the Euro-Argo ONE project (grant agreement no. 101188133). PMEL Contribution Number 5699. ELM was supported by the European Union under grant agreement no. 101094690 (EuroGO-SHIP). EVW was supported by the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (funded by the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water through the Antarctic Science Collaboration Initiative) and Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). HH received support from the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by DSIT. AGS acknowledges support from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) infrastructure call (INFRA24017). WL acknowledges support from the GREAT project funded by CNES through the Ocean Surface Topography Science Team (OSTST) and from the ESA Sea Level Budget Closure project under the Climate Change Initiative phase 2. OS was supported by NASA award S0-RRNES20-0051 and 80NSSC20K1518. APM received support from the NERC Atlantis project (NE/Y005589/1). D.D. was supported by the French ANR project no. ANR-21-CE01-0011-01—CROSSROAD and the Horizon Europe project 101059547—EPOC. MAB, KM, and HZ received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 862626, EuroSea) and from Horizon Europe (grant agreement no. 101081460, ASPECT Project).

Peer reviewed