is quickly converted to a format that can be inserted on the Global Telecommunications System (GTS). The GTS is operated by the World Meteorological Organisation, or WMO, specifically for the purpose of sharing data needed for weather forecasting. Thus all nations who are members of the WMO receive all Argo profiles within a few hours of the acquisition of the profile. Data are also made available through ftp and WWW access via two Argo Global Data Centres (or GDACs), one in France and one in the US. About 90% of all profiles acquired are made available to global access within 24 hours, with the remaining profiles becoming available soon thereafter. For a researcher to use data acquired via the GTS or from the Argo Global Data Centres (GDACs) does require programming skills. The GDACs supply multi-profile files that are a native file format for Ocean DataView. For any day there are files with names like 20121106_prof.nc that are called multi-profile files. This example is a file specific to 6 November 2012 and contains all profiles in a single NetCDF file for one ocean basin. The GDACs identify three ocean basins, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific. Thus three multi-profile files will carry every Argo profile acquired on that specific day. A user who wants to explore Argo data but lacks programming skills might like to download the Argo Global Marine Atlas which is an easy-to-use utility that allows the creation of products based on Argo data such as the salinity section shown above, but also horizontal maps of ocean properties, time series at any location etc. This Atlas also carries an "update" button that allows data to be updated periodically. The Argo Global Marine Atlas is maintained at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Argo data can also be displayed in Google Earth with a layer developed by the Argo Technical Coordinator. Data results Argo is now the dominant source of information about the climatic state of the oceans and is being widely used in many publications as seen in the diagram opposite. Topics addressed include air-sea interaction, ocean currents, interannual variability, El Niño, mesoscale eddies, water mass properties and transformation. Argo is also now permitting direct computations of the global ocean heat content. A notable recent paper was published by Durack and Wijffels that analyzed global changes in surface salinity patterns. They determine that areas of the world