The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS; http://www.goosocean.org) is an international framework for supporting and sustaining the geographically distributed collection of ocean observations designed to benefit science and society. Observations required to guide an evidentiary-​based response by society to environmental change are determined by various international conventions (e.g., United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). GOOS, under the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, seeks to respond to the high-level requirement for ocean observations by managing a suite of global networks that collect observations. These networks include, for example, the global array of nearly 4,000 Argo profiling floats, arrays of about 1,250 surface drifters and 300 precision tide gauges, moorings at dozens of key sites around the planet, and repeat hydrographic lines that replicate the sampling of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment about every 10 years (Figure 1).

Lindstrom, E. 2018. On the relationship between the Global Ocean Observing System and the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Oceanography 31(1):38–41, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2018.107.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.