Ship and Buoy Reports
For over a century, reports from the world's oceans have been received real-time for safety reasons and to help with general weather forecasting. The reports are coded using the synoptic code, and relayed via radio or satellite to weather organizations worldwide. Buoy reports are automated, and maintained by the country that moored the buoy in that location. Larger moored buoys are used near shore, while smaller drifting buoys are used farther out at sea.
Due to the importance of reports from the surface of the ocean, the voluntary observing ship program, known as VOS, was set up to train crews how to take weather observations while at sea and also to calibrate weather sensors used aboard ships when they arrive in port, such as barometers and thermometers. The beaufort scale is still generally used to determine wind speed from manual observers out at sea. Ships with anemometers have issues with determining wind speeds at higher wind speeds due to blockage of the instruments by increasing high seas.
Read more about this topic: Surface Weather Observation
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