The European contribution to the International Argo Programme (EURO-ARGO) is a distributed Research Infrastructure that organizes and federates the European contribution to the Argo international programme for in situ ocean observations. EUROARGO provides enhanced coverage in the European regional seas by deploying and operating an array of around 800 floats corresponding to ¼ of the global Argo array of profiling floats which measure temperature and salinity every 10 days throughout the deep global oceans. It delivers data both in real-time and delayed mode for climate change research and monitoring as well as operational services such as Copernicus. It also aims at developing the new phase of Argo extending the network to abyssal oceans, biogeochemical parameters, marginal seas and high latitudes.

Built around the Argo programme, EURO-ARGO is also a major in situ infrastructure for the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet). Entered the ESFRI Roadmap in 2006, EURO-ARGO established the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in 2014. Since then, the EURO-ARGO ERIC has been developing its long-term strategy to enhance and strengthen its data system to support the real-time requirements of operational modelling applications in oceanography and meteorology, and to develop new services for Members such as joint float procurement, at-sea monitoring of the European fleet and training. Its data coverage is deemed to be sufficient to resolve many of the important global climate signals.