World Ocean World Ocean The World Ocean or Global Ocean (colloquially the sea or the ocean) is the interconnected system of Earth's oceanic waters, and comprises the bulk of the hydrosphere, covering (70.8%) of Earth's surface, with a total volume of roughly . The unity and continuity of the World Ocean, with relatively free interchange among its parts, is of fundamental importance to oceanography. It is divided into a number of principal oceanic areas that are delimited by the continents and various oceanographic features: these divisions are the Atlantic Ocean, Arctic Ocean (sometimes considered a sea of the Atlantic), Indian Ocean, Pacific
World Ocean Database Project Projects such as the completed World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), as well as currently active programs such as CLIVAR and Argo, (c) International Ocean Data Management Projects such as the IOC/IODE Global Oceanographic Data Archaeology and Rescue Project (GODAR), and (d) Real-time Ocean Observing Systems such as the IOC/IODE Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Project (GTSPP). All ocean data acquired by WDC Silver Spring – USA are considered as part of the WDC archive and are freely available as public domain data. The World Ocean Database was first released in 1994 and updates have been