Abstract
A World Ocean Experiment (WOCE) to improve our description and understanding of the world ocean circulation is being planned. Technological and scientific developments of the last decades have made possible the serious consideration of such a global experiment to begin in the late 1980s. These developments include an increased understanding of the nature of ocean circulation and the sampling procedures needed to observe it, instrumentation for long time series measurements, numerical ocean models and high‐capacity computers to use them, improved methods for measurement of chemical tracers, the means for obtaining improved ocean measurements from vessels of opportunity, satellite technology that can observe both the primary atmospheric forcing and the oceanic response, and the realization that addressing global societal problems related to the ocean will require a coordinated, globalscale program of ocean observation and modeling.
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