The primary goal of the Argo program is to maintain a global array of autonomous profiling floats integrated with other elements of the climate observing system.

The specific aims are to:

• detect climate variability over seasonal to decadal time-scales including changes in the large-scale distribution of temperature and salinity and in the transport of these properties by large-scale ocean circulation.
• provide information needed for the calibration of satellite measurements.
• deliver data for the initialization and constraint of climate models.

Argo Australia is the third largest contributer to the global array (in terms of instrument numbers) after the US and Japan.