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Determining how human activities and natural forces are influencing climate--and foreseeing the consequences involved--is one of the greatest challenges to science today. Understanding climate change depends on detailed scientific knowledge of the ocean and the atmosphere. Over the last 40 years, we have learned much about the circulation patterns in the atmosphere and have developed a worldwide system for measuring and monitoring changes in the weather. However, the ability to make weather predictions months in advance and to project climate change over periods of years and decades requires a knowledge of the global ocean circulation and how it interacts with the atmosphere. The processes are not fully understood, nor does any worldwide system for monitoring changes in the ocean exist.
The information gathered during WOCE will provide the data necessary to make major improvements in the accuracy of the ocean circulation's numerical models. As these models improve, they will enhance coupled models of the ocean/atmospheric circulation to better simulate-and perhaps ultimately predict--how the ocean and the atmosphere together cause global climate change over long periods. WOCE data also will help determine the design of a long-term ocean observing system.
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