11 meeting of the International Argo Steering Team Scripps ...

time to deploy floats. This would take place over time, so there would not be a large change at
once.
Some AST members asked for clarifications on the funding provided by SOT and on the
conditions of the shared time between Argo and SOT. TC recalled that expanding his activities
to SOT permitted, in particular, to hire a new resource at JCOMMOPS, and to provide support
to a new programme OceanSITES (via the DBCP TC). The level of financial support from SOT
and OceanSITES is under development and must be strengthened. This is being addressed to
the concerned panels. It is to be noted that JCOMMOPS is used to provide “free services” while
in parallel identifying new funding sources.
2009 was a challenging year for the TC with a conjunction of important meetings, a new
resource to manage, the new information system to implement, and growing Argo activities and
JCOMMOPS administrative issues.
The TC recalled that no more assistance will be provided to emerging observing systems in
order to focus on Argo issues.
Regarding Bio-Argo activities, TC remarked that tracking such exotic platforms was time
consuming with the introduction of new issues with meta/data management. TC invited the Bio-
Argo group to consider also supporting the Argo infrastructure, including the AIC, to help include
their data in the Argo data stream.
TC remarked that it was difficult to produce the “monthly AIC report” every month, and
reassured the AST that all will be done to produce at least a report every two months. Some
AST members remarked the AIC report was an excellent initiative and provided feedback on
some details that would be useful to improve it. The latest monthly report
(http://argo.jcommops.org/FTPRoot/Argo/Doc/2010-01-02_AIC.pdf) includes many yearly
statistics on the array status.
TC mentioned that the software developer was now fully operational and focusing on the
developments for Google Ocean (see section 8.4 of this report for further details).
He mentioned the new Information System was gradually being developed and that most of the
efforts made concern the overall architecture and the new database structure.
Database design and synchronization with main data sources (Argos, GTS, GDACs) should be
operational by April 2010. All new developments will then be made on this new database with
the target to release the first web services early 2011.
TC insisted on the fact that the tracking of Iridium floats is becoming a serious problem. The
delivery of Iridium data to Argo customers is decentralized and heterogeneous. Hence the AIC
cannot synchronize efficiently its tracking system with Iridium floats. The AIC needs to link with
Iridium data before it reaches customers.
Action item 3: ATC to explore ways to obtain direct access to Iridium data for
monitoring purposes.
TC presented briefly the new products available for the Network planning and monitoring,
including:
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