The primary goal of the DAC is to assemble and provide uniform quality control of sea surface temperature (SST) and surface velocity measurements. These measurements are obtained as part of an international program designed to make these data available in an effort to improve climate prediction. Climate prediction models require accurate estimates of SST to initialize their ocean component. Drifting buoys provide essential ground truth SST data for this purpose. The models also require validation by comparison with independent data sets. Surface velocity measurements are used for this validation.