Volume 56, Number 3 December 2012 Photo by Denice Drass

Note
December 2012 ~ Mariners Weather Log
12
A Note
I want to start off by saying hello and thank you for all your
support of the Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) program.
The program continues to be a great success thanks to all
the mariners out there that are participating in the program.
Through the years, the VOS program has been “numbers
based”. In essence, you send a lot of observations, we award
the ships accordingly. Awards and accolades have been given
to the ships that have taken the most observations based on
numbers alone. This was a very simple and objective way of
distributing awards, prior to our abilities to scrutinize data
quality.
The “numbers” method was unfair to ships that had different
and or limited sea time missions as they weren’t “underway”
as often. Although their sea days were not so extensive,
they were taking accurate observations religiously while
underway. The “numbers” method of awards also inspired
some friendly and sometimes not so friendly competition
throughout the program, which in turn, has bolstered the
numbers even higher. We were certainly happy about the
results until we took a closer look at the data. We found
that in the race for awards or recognitions some less than
optimum results. It is these that I would like to bring to the
reader’s attention.
Some of the things we found may be construed as “cheating
or gaming” the system. We found ships that were not only
sending in the same observation over and over again….some
were sending in the same observation every 10 minutes
in an effort to increase their numbers. This unnecessary,
unwarranted practice is a waste of resources and money.
I know some of you are thinking, “Well the weather doesn’t
change that much so it looks like we are sending the same
observation every hour.” This leads me to my next issue…..
an alarming number of ships have started to round off the
observed values and report them to the nearest whole degree
and whole millibar. This is not what the code requires and
this may be the reason the observation “appears” to never
change.
Another issue we tend to see quite often is ships that have
been issued a full complement of weather equipment by the
PMO, but only report ships position and temperature. While
this is useful information, it takes much less effort to do
than ships that are taking a full coded observation. Regular
incomplete observations don’t warrant a full complement of
weather equipment.
By John Wasserman
The motto for our program has always been: Only YOU know
the weather at your position. Report it at 0000, 0600, 1200,
1800 UTC to NOAA’s National Weather Service. We have
asked for accurate weather observations to be transmitted
every six hours. Some of the ships have started taking
observations every hour, this is great and we appreciate the
extra effort! If you want to and have the time to transmit
hourly observations and you can do so without sacrificing
quality then we (of course) support that. Keep in mind that
transmitting a poor observation can be more harmful than
no data at all.
Quality over quantity…as we press forward into 2013 we
will be making some changes in how the ships observations
are evaluated and how awards will be given out. Starting
1/1/2013 Awards will not be solely based on number of
observations; we will also be putting a great deal of emphasis
on quality. In the past we have capped the number of awards
at approximately 100…we will no longer do this. We believe
as quality of observations go up; we will be able to distribute
more awards to more deserving ships.
We will be looking more closely at the following:
How complete the observation is. (are all elements that can
be observed, being observed?)
Is the code being followed? Are elements such as pressure,
temperature and dew point being taken and reported to the
nearest tenth?
The timeliness of the observation, we understand that
some Sat-C systems are set up to transmit and receive only
a few times a day, this will also be taken into consideration.
But “attachments” in an email cannot be processed unless
someone happens to grab the unprocessable files, notices
that there is an attachment, extracts your “attachment” and
resends it “properly”. Usually by then it is too late to even be
used for model guidance. Sometimes those observations are
received 2-4 hours late, sometimes even later.
So to the observer…. There may be some bad habits that have
developed as mentioned earlier in this missive that need to be
broken. If you have any questions about the code or weather
observations in general, feel free to contact your PMO or us
at vos@noaa.gov. Also if you are interested in seeing what
your ship is sending out and what can be done to improve
the quality, again feel free to contact us. We are hoping to
change the mindset of the entire US program and realize this
may take time. We are happy to help in any way that we can.