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 initialisation and constraint of climate models.

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