As a contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is developing surface moorings that carry a suite of field-proven and cost-effective sensors to monitor air-sea heat, moisture, and momentum fluxes, carbon dioxide uptake, and upper ocean temperature, salinity, and currents. In June 2004, an NOAA surface mooring, referred to as the Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO), was deployed in the Kuroshio Extension's (KE) southern recirculation gyre, approximately 300 nautical miles east of Japan. In 2006, a partnership between NOAA and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology was formed that deployed a second mooring (referred to as JKEO) north of the KE jet in February 2007. KE is a region of strong currents, typhoons, and winter storms. Designing and maintaining moorings in the KE is a challenging engineering task. All data are publicly available. A subset of the data are telemetered and made available in near real time through the Global Telecommunications System and web-based data distribution systems. Data from these time-series reference sites serve a wide research and operational community and are being used for assessing numerical weather prediction analyses and reanalyses and for quantifying the air-sea interaction in this dynamic region.