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 data and delayed mode (reprocessed) data.