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Exercise Title: Accessing Global Marine Weather Products
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Abstract: This is not an "exercise" per se, but rather a short visual survey of some major marine weather product website, with a view toward accessing their data products (almost all graphic). "Informational" website are not presented, in favor of sites that provide actual weather products. Global scope and easy understandability were of primary importance in the selection of sites. This is a very superficial survey of the author' short list, and unfortunately probably ignores some valuable products along the way. THIS LESSON IS PROVIDED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. NO ONE SHOULD ATTEMPT TO RELY ON THESE ANALYSIS PRODUCTS FOR NAVIGATION OR FOR ANY OPERATIONAL PURPOSES AT SEA.
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Preliminary Reading (in OceanTeacher, unless otherwise indicated):
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Required Software:
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Other Resources:
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Related Exercises:
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Author: Murray Brown
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Version: July 2013
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1. Links to Panel sections below:
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2. WMO Weather Information Service
Typical top-down WMO compilation of very general weather summaries/forecasts for many countries.
Open this main page to see the list of participating countries (bottom of this page) and an easy-to-use index map of reporting station. Click on AFRICA to see the reports there.
NOTE: Some of these countries currently only provide monthly climatologies for their contribution.
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| 2. Click on AFRICA to see this list of available countries. |
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| 3. Select MADAGASCAR to see this list of locations. |
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| 4. Click on ANTANANARIVO to see this weather report, and a nice monthly climatology of temperature and rainfall statistics. |
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5. WMO Severe Weather Information Centre
The main page shows a list of 6 main product groups in the left-hand menu. The default item, TROPICAL CYCLONES, is not other wise labeled, but the other items are fully identified.
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| 6. Click on GALE to see a fully-formed product page, with better item key along the top. |
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| 7. You can click on any symbol to see more detailed information. In this case a ship report from the triangle far south of Madagascar. |
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8. WMO/JCOMM Global Marine Distress and Safety System
The main page shows a long list of warning areas on the left. These are very officially managed, each by a designated country.
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| 9. Click on METAREAS MAP (along the bottom margin) to see this map of the areas, with names of manager-countries. |
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10. In the list of areas, click on METAREA II (north-west Africa, managed by France) to see this current warning bulletin.
Examine it to see all the various documents and links provided. The major weather stations links take you to "NAVTEX" advisory bulletins
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11. NOAA Global List: Marine Forecasts
This is a very big page with a huge set of lists of links to various US NOAA resources, mainly national.
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| 12. Scroll down the page to find the OBSERVATIONS list. The global items with usable data are shown here as active links. We'll look at these 4 in the next few panels. |
Observations
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13. Buoy, C-MAN, Ship, and Drifting Buoy Observations
This link takes you directly to this global map (use the enlarge tool) of many different operational surface marine reporting systems. Take the time to research which systems are included.
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| 14. You can click on any symbol to see the latest reported data, plus links to metadata and historical data. |
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15. Ocean Surface Winds and Other Data Derived from Satellites
This NOAA page leads to a the wind data products of a special thematic team.
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| 16. Click on the DATA PRODUCTS link in the left-hand menu to see this list of products (each identified by its satellite). |
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17. Click on the ASCAT METOP A link to see this typical product.
See this related exercise for direct data access: 9.17 Visualizing Satellite-Measured Winds in IDV: ASCAT
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18. Mean Sea Level Trends for Global Network Stations
This global data access tool includes mainly-USA locations on the left and global locations on the right. It's actually more of a climatological tool, because the data are long-term in nature, but it's so interesting I included it here anyway.
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| 19. Scroll down to find the Namibia site (Walvis Bay) to see what data are presented. The time-series shows "episodic" large-scale perturbations and continuous background low-magnitude variations. |
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20. NOAA's Forecast System Laboratory's Display of Surface Data
When you open this link, you immediately see a global map of station locations, color coded by the current variable (in this case TEMPERATURE).
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| 21. Using the VARIABLE selection control at the bottom left corner, WIND SPEED has been selected now. |
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| 22. You can see all available data from any station by clicking on it. Here the Mauritius station, just to the east of Madagascar, has been selected. |
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23. NOAA Global Internet Weather Source
When you open this link, you'll find an INTERNATIONAL section on the main page. Scroll down to find LIBERIA, and click GO.
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| 24. On the LIBERIA page, you can find the location you want (perhaps ROBERTS FIELD) and click GO. |
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| 25. This takes you to the latest weather report for this location. |
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| 26. I hope this brief tour of some major marine meteorology sites has shown you some places of interest. I'll add more sites as I run across them in my work with MDL exercises. |
