Zusammenfassung
A major accomplishment of the recently completed Tropical
Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Program was the development
of an ocean observing system to support
seasonal-to-interannual climate studies. This paper reviews
the scientific motivations for the development of that
observing system, the technological advances that made it
possible, and the scientific advances that resulted from
the availability of a significantly expanded observational
database. A primary phenomenological focus of TOGA was
interannual variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere
system associated with El Ni�o and the Southern Oscillation
(ENSO). Prior to the start of TOGA, our understanding of
the physical processes responsible for the ENSO cycle was
limited, our ability to monitor variability in the tropical
oceans was primitive, and the capability to predict ENSO
was nonexistent. TOGA therefore initiated and/or supported
efforts to provide real-time measurements of the following
key oceanographic variables: surface winds, sea surface
temperature, subsurface temperature, sea level and ocean
velocity. Specific in situ observational programs developed
to provide these data sets included the Tropical
Atmosphere-Ocean (TAO) array of moored buoys in the
Pacific, a surface drifting buoy program, an island and
coastal tide gauge network, and a volunteer observing ship
network of expendable bathythermograph measurements.
Complementing these in situ efforts were satellite missions
which provided near-global coverage of surface winds, sea
surface temperature, and sea level. These new TOGA data
sets led to fundamental progress in our understanding of
the physical processes responsible for ENSO and to the
development of coupled ocean-atmosphere models for ENSO
prediction.
Nutzer