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 Th6 program goals of GARP intersect with the objectives of other international environmental programs. One such program is the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Integrated.Global Ocean Station System (IGOSS) being developed jointly with the World Meteorological Organization to provide more extensive and timely information for analysis and prediction of the state of the oceans and for research purposes. This is accomplished through the development of a comprehensive monitoring system for the total physical oceanatmosphere environment. Another is EARTHWATCH, a major component of the United Nations Enviornment Program (UNEP) being developed to monitor and assess the state of the oceans, atmosphere, land and human health in order that rational decisions can be made for the management of the environment. EARTHWATCH will also interact with and depend on the monitoring and research capabilities of GARP. A key component of the UNEP/EARTHWATCH global baseline and regional monitoring effort is the Global Environment MNonitoring System, which is designed to measure and monitor priority pollutants and related factors of the atmospheric environment, thus permitting quantitative assessment of the global impact of manmade and natural influences on weather and climate.
 The Global Observing System provides worldwide meteorological and related environment observation data needed by the World Weather Watch and GARP. The overall system consists of two subsystens: a space-based satellite subsystem, composed of two types of satellites, those in polar orbit and those in geostationary orbit; and a surface-based subsystem composed of basic synoptic surface and upper air networks, other networks of stations on land and sea, and aircraft meteorological observations.
 The U.S. Committee for the Global Atmospheric Research Program believes that these observational programs planned in support of GARP offer an unparalleled opportunity to observe the global atmosphere, and furthermore that every effort should be made to use these data for climatic purposes as well as for the purposes of weather prediction. The Committee emphasized however, that the climatic system consists of important nonatmospheric components, including the world's oceans, ice masses, and land surfaces, together with elements of the biosphere. While it is not necessary to measure all of these cornponents in the same detail with which the atmosphere is observed, their roles in climatic variation should not be overlooked.88
 The Committee's 1975 report, "Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action," further stated that: The problem of climatic variation differs from that of weather forecasting by the nature of the data sets required. The primary data needs of weather prediction are accurate and dense synoptic observations of the atmosphere's present and future states, while the data needed for studies of climatic variation are longer-term statistics of a much wider variety of variables. When climatic variations over long time scales are considered, these variables must be supplied from fields outside of observational meteorology. Thus, an essential characteristic of climate is its involvement of a wide range of nonatmospheric scientific disciplines, for example, oceanography, glaciology, hydrology, astronomy, geology, and paleantology as well as from the biological and social sciences of ecology,. geography, archaeology, history, economics, and sociology.
 National Research Council, U.S. Committee for the Global Atmospheric Research Program, "Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action," pp. 105, 106.