The Drifting Buoys GDAC -Global Data Assembly Centre- is the repository of surface drifters data. Both NRT -Near Real Time- and DM -Delayed Mode- data are available on the GDAC. Drifters report generally trajectories, sea-surface temperatures, atmospheric pressures at sea-level, as well as sea-surface salinity or sub-surface temperature in the ocean top layer.

GOSUD aims at assembling in-situ observations of the world ocean surface collected by a variety of ships and at distributing quality controlled datasets. At present time the variables considered by GOSUD are temperature and salinity. The GOSUD data are mostly collected using thermosalinographs (TSG) installed on research vessels, on commercial ships and in some cases on sailing exploration ships. GOSUD manages both near-real time (RT and NRT) data and delayed mode (DM-reprocessed) data. The GOSUD GDAC is hosted by the Coriolis data centre (France) and a back-up (permanent archived) is performed on a daily basis by NCEIS (NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information).

GO-SHIP, the Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program, is conducting repeat hydrography with high accuracy high precision reference measurements of a variety of EOVs through the whole water column. A selection of continent-to-continent full depth sections are repeated at roughly decadal intervals. The data archive for CTD data and bottle data is currently at CCHDO, although the CTD data from European cruises are available at Seadatanet as well.