Ocean Network

Abstract

Marine Branch, Meteorological O@eHE recommendations which were made by the Commission for Maritime T Meteorology a t their Conference in London last summer, and which were later approved by the Executive Committee of the World Meteorological Organization at Geneva, bring to the attention of the world the important part that merchant shipping plays in the meteorological picture. A note about this conference appeared in the October 1952 number of Weather, from which it will be seen that many of the resolutions concerned ways and means of improving the density of the meteorological network over the oceans and of improving the quality of the observations and simplifying the work of the observers aboard the ships. There is no doubt that adequate meteorological information from the oceans is essential if we are ever to learn much about the general behaviour of the atmosphere, either synoptically or climatologically.There is a unique feature about the method in which the world obtains its weather information from the oceans. With the exception of that provided by the small number of recently-established ocean weather stations and, very occasionally, naval vessels, this information is provided entirely voluntarily by the officers of the ' selected ' merchant ships of all nations. Here we have a live and healthy form of practical international co-operation which has gone on for nearly 100 years. Merchant shipping is, and always has been, essentially an international industry-not only is maritime commerce international, but shipping practice, as well as the customs, technical terms and jargon of the sea are more or less common to the mariners of all nations. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the seaman so willingly plays his part, for no reward, in international meteorology. I t is interesting to recall that it was a seaman, in the person of Maury, who inspired the first International Meteorological Conference in Brussels in 1853.There are at present 2,400 ' selected ' ships of all nations whose officers voluntarily make meteorological observations and transmit the coded results by radio to various meteorological centres whenever the vessel is at sea, and of these 768 ships belong to nations of the British Commonwealth. It is upon these ' selected ' ships that meteorologists depend for their information about weather conditions at sea, and the world therefore owes a debt of gratitude to the men who serve in them.A total of 2,400 ships spread over all oceans would not make a very close network of observations even if every one of those ships happened to be at sea at the same time, and if the vessels were all equally spaced. In fact, it seems probable from investigations which have been made that no more than about 1100 of these ships are at sea on a given day. There is littl'e doubt that all these ships will be following specific Great Circle or rhumb-line tracks between certain large ports or prominent landmarks. In other words, they will be 140