with high surface salinity are getting saltier and areas of the world with relatively low surface salinity are getting fresher. This has been described as 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer'. Scientifically speaking, the distributions of salt are governed by the difference between precipitation and evaporation. Areas, such as the northern North Pacific Ocean, where precipitation dominates evaporation are fresher than average. The implication of their result is that the Earth is seeing an intensification of the global hydrological cycle. Argo data are also being used to drive computer models of the climate system leading to improvements in the ability of nations to forecast seasonal climate variations. Argo data were critical in the drafting of Chapter 3 (Working Group 1) of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (released September 2013) and an appendix was added to that chapter to emphasize the profound change that had taken place in the quality and volume of ocean data since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and the resulting improvement in confidence in the description of surface salinity changes and upper-ocean heat content. Argo data were used along with sea level change data from satellite altimetry in a new approach to analyzing global warming, reported in Eos in 2017. David Morrison reports that "[b]oth of these data sets show clear signatures of heat deposition in the ocean, from the temperature changes in the top 2 km of water and from the expansion of the ocean water due to heating. These two measures are less noisy than land and atmospheric temperatures." Argo and CERES data collected between 2005 and 2019 have been compared as independent measures of the global change in Earth's energy imbalance. Both data sets showed similar behavior at annualized resolution, as well as a doubling of the linear trend in planet's heating rate during that 14-year span. See also Ocean acoustic tomography Underwater gliders Integrated Ocean Observing System References External links The Argo Portal International Argo Information Centre Argo at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego Sea-Bird Scientific SBE 41CP Argo CTD Realtime Interactive Map Realtime Google Earth File Coriolis Global Argo Data Server - EU Mirror FNMOC Global Argo Data server - US Mirror NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory profiling float project deploys floats as part of the Argo program, provides data on-line, and is active in delayed-mode salinity calibration and quality control for US Argo floats. Sea-Bird Scientific Navis