text: So, as of 2013, weve had in place a new technology for about a decade that promises to give us the data we need to begin to understand this largest component of the global water cycle. Now consider that there are known ocean processes that portray themselves in the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and that we have reasonably complete sea surface temperature records stretching back to the late 1800s. These ocean processes portray themselves as modes of natural variability with patterns in time (cycles) that last for 50 to 80 years. Can we hope now, with only 10 years of data, to understand how those multidecadal processes portray themselves below the surfaces of the oceans? The realistic answer is no.