The impetus for the creation of GOOS came from the IOC’s Technical Committee for Ocean Processes and Climate (TC/OPC) in the late 1980s. The concept of a global ocean observing system grew from the realisation that understanding and forecasting climate change would require a long-term, multivariate ocean observing system.

In 1988 the IOC created an ad hoc expert group to prepare proposals for the development of an integrated global ocean observing system leading to a world ocean watch. In 1989 the WMO and the IOC endorsed the programme suggested by the expert group to design and implement a global operational observing system.

Hank Stommel, the free thinking oceanographer from Woods Hole, published an exciting vision of the WOOS in 1989.  The idea of a WOOS was not new, but the time to implement it was at hand.   See The Slocum Mission .

GOOS in its present form was created in 1991, when the TC/OPC agreed that the ocean observing system concept should be broadened to include physical, chemical and biological coastal ocean monitoring. 16th IOC Assembly established a GOOS Support Office (GSO) and the World Meteorological Organization’s 11th Congress agreed to co-sponsor the GOOS.

In 1992, an Intergovernmental committee for GOOS (I-GOOS) was formed to coordinate the implementation of GOOS and to replace the TC/OPC. A GOOS Technical and Scientific Advisory Panel (later to become the GSSC) was proposed the same year, and the GOOS Project Office (GPO) was set up within the IOC. By 1998 a GOOS strategic plan and prospectus had been published.

The in 2005 the 23rd Assembly of the IOC noted that with the advent of the proposed Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), the GOOS should be considered as the marine component of the GEOSS.

A more detailed version of the history of GOOS (PDF - 82 KB)

Download the original resolutions forming GOOS