A great legacy of TOGA is its Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array completed in 1994, which consists of nearly 70 moored buoys in the tropical Pacific with both oceanic and atmospheric data available in real-time. These goals were generally achieved, making TOGA one of the most successful international programs in ocean and climate research. With a focus on ENSO, the goals of TOGA were to 1) gain a description of the tropical oceans and the global atmosphere as a time-dependent system in order to determine the extent to which the system is predictable on time scales of months to years and to understand the mechanisms and processes underlying its predictability 2) study the feasibility of modeling the couple ocean-atmosphere system for the purpose of predicting its variation on time scales of months to years and 3) provide the scientific background for designing an observing and data dissemination system to support operational ENSO predication by coupled ocean-atmosphere models. TOGA was largely motivated by the strong 1982–83 El Niño event, which came as a total surprise because of the lack of real-time observation and prediction. It has evolved over the years, and will continue to provide invaluable and irreplaceable service to the ENSO research and prediction community. Such an observing system was first established during the 10-year (1985–94) international Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program. Of particular interest is the construction and maintenance of an ENSO observing network that covers the tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere coupled system, providing real-time data for ENSO state monitoring and forecast initialization. Therefore, tremendous resources and efforts have been devoted to ENSO research over the last three decades. Since societies and ecosystems are profoundly affected, monitoring and predicting ENSO are of great importance for our wellbeing and sustainability. ENSO influences climate worldwide because it brings about large changes in the heating of tropical atmosphere that greatly alter the global atmospheric circulation.
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El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is by far the most energetic and influential short-term climate variability on our planet, originating from an instability of the large-scale ocean-atmosphere interaction in the tropical Pacific.