Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have developed self-contained, five-year instruments, which are deployed on a global basis to measure the world oceans every ten days. Scientist Dean Roemmich says the international, robotic instrument network, called Argo, now covers most of the globe.

Roemmich: They're quite modest looking – they're aluminum pressure housing, it's a fairly small instrument. The pressure housing will go down to two thousand meters – very high pressure in the ocean. Then, it has on its tops a satellite transmitting antenna and the sensor package for measuring temperature, salinity and pressure.

Narrator: Argo has many applications, but Roemmich says the primary driver is climate.

Roemmich: When the climate system warms, what we're really talking about is warming of the ocean almost entirely, so I think the first thing we can learn from ARGO is the pattern and the depth penetration of temperature change in the ocean.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.