Sponsored by AST and PICES and hosted by CARDC and the Second Institute of Oceanography, SOA, the ASW-3 was held in March 24 – 27, 2009 in Hangzhou, China. 102 participants from 13 countries (USA, France, Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, Spain, UK, India, Argentina, China, Germany and Norway) attended the workshop. The workshop received 90 papers, in which 43 were presented orally and 47 as poster in five sessions, that is, heat and salt budgets on global and regional scales; estimation of circulation fields on global and regional scales; the role of Argo in constraining ocean data assimilation field; seasonal to inter-annual variability as seen by Argo and new technology. The work shop is a great success and the beauty of the city and the generous hospitality of the host has left deep impression on the participants. Just as Prof. Howard Freeland, co-chairman of AST said in his letter of thanks to Prof. Jianping Xu, Chief Scientist of China Argo, “We got the instructions, information and support that we needed. Now all that remains is to write the necessary white paper for UNESCO to be presented at the OceanObs meeting in Venice in September.” “I firmly believe that 10 years from now when the Argo executive is going through this process again they will look back at the meetings in Hangzhou and see that this really can be done and here is one very successful example. I hope that 10 years from now you will be able to look back with pride at what was achieved in Hangzhou. We still have to draw the road map for the next 10 years of Argo, but last week we got the information needed to draw that map, Hangzhou in 2009 and ASW-3 will for a long time be seen as an important turning point for ocean science.” “The generosity of our Chinese colleagues is, of course, legendary and I am sure that all participants enjoyed the wonderful meals and entertainment throughout the series of meetings in the beautiful city of Hangzhou.”