WOCE

The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) is a component of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and is the most ambitious oceanographic experiment undertaken to-date.

The experiment aims first to develop models to predict decadal climate variability and change, to collect the data - provided by satellites, conventional in-situ physical and chemical observations - to test them and then to determine the representativeness of the specific WOCE data sets for the long-term behaviour of the ocean, and to find methods for determining long-term changes in the ocean circulation.

The success of WOCE will have considerable impact on follow-up programmes; CLIVAR, a global study of ocean climate variability and predictability, and GODAE, the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment.

The CERSAT contributes substantially to the experiment by providing global satellite wind fields within the WOCE package (see the 'Mean Wind Fields' in the data rubric).