abstract:The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) is an international institution co-sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Council for Science (ICSU). GCOS is intended to be a long-term, user-driven operational system capable of providing the comprehensive observations required for monitoring the climate system, for detecting and attributing climate change, for assessing the impacts of climate variability and change, and for supporting research toward improved understanding, modelling and prediction of the climate system.
More than 2000 deployments per year are required to maintain the two global arrays, which are an essential part of the GlobalClimateObservingSystem, providing crucial data for weather forecasts and information on the heat content of the oceans.
As such, they form an essential component of marine observing systems established as part of the World Weather Watch, the World Climate Research Programme, the Global Ocean ObservingSystem, the GlobalClimateObservingSystem and other meteorological and oceanographic operational and research programmes.
The concept of a global ocean observingsystem grew from the realisation that understanding and forecasting climate change would require a long-term, multivariate ocean observingsystem.