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The Program
Since 1999, the marine activities of WMO as well as those of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, have been coordinated by the Joint WMO/IOC Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM). The VOS Scheme is a core observing Programme of the Ship Observations Team (SOT) in the Observations Programme Area of JCOMM.
There are three types of ships in the VOS Scheme:
- Selected ships
- Supplementary ships
- Auxiliary ships
A selected ship is equipped with sufficient certified meteorological instruments for making observations, transmits regular weather reports and enters the observations in meteorological logbooks. It should have at least a barometer, a thermometer for sea-surface temperature, a psychrometer and a barograph. Most of the VOS are selected ships.
A supplementary ship is equipped with a limited number of certified meteorological instruments for making observations, transmits regular weather reports and enters the observations in meteorological logbooks.
An auxiliary ship is without certified meteorological instruments and transmits reports in a reduced code or in plain language, either as a routine or on request, in certain areas or under certain conditions. Auxiliary ships usually report from data-sparse areas outside the regular shipping lanes.
Users
The main emphasis of the VOS program has been the provision of data for atmospheric weather forecasting. In this regard, the data are used for the initialization of numerical weather prediction models. A second major use for VOS data is the detection of biases in remote sensed data from changing calibrations or atmospheric transmission conditions.
A third major use of VOS data is for climate change studies. Although the existing data have been used for this purpose it has been recognized by the climate programs that there is a growing need for higher quality data from a sub-set of the VOS. |
Data Management
Marine meteorological observations are recorded on board most ships in special meteorological registers (logbooks) provided by national meteorological services. The logbooks are collected by the Port Meteorological Officer of the recruiting country and the observations are transferred from the logbooks to magnetic media, in a standard, internationally agreed, format. Increasing numbers of ships are being equipped with personal computers and software which stores the observations on diskette in the internationally agreed format. This avoids data transfer from logbook to magnetic media as a possible source of error.
The data are then sent, at approximately three-month intervals, to global collecting centres in Germany and the United Kingdom. These centres ensure that minimum quality control has been applied to the data, and then, every three months, supply data to eight Members, each with a specific area of responsibility for the preparation of climatological summaries.
View the JCOMM data management diagram
Supplementary Programs & Projects
- The VOS Climate Project (VOSClim) is an ongoing project within the JCOMM Voluntary Observing Ship Scheme, and is coordinated by the Ship Observations Team (SOT) Task Team on VOSClim. The aim of the VOSClim is to provide a high-quality subset of marine meteorological data, supplemented by an extensive array of metadata, to be available in real-time and also in delayed mode to support global climate studies. This is a follow-up to the VOS Special Observing Project North Atlantic (VSOP-NA) that was conducted on behalf of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) from 1988 to 1990.
- The Automated Shipboard Aerological Programme (ASAPP) commenced in the mid-1980s to provide vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind direction from the vast data-sparse ocean areas.
- The Ship-of-Opportunity Programme (SOOP) collects a range of predominantly oceanographic data, most notably Upper Ocean Thermal (UOT) data, but also atmospheric & ocean carbon, ocean fluorescence & pigments, sub-surface temperature & salinity data.
- The Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS) initiative aims to improve the quality of meteorological and near-surface oceanographic observations collected in-situ on research vessels and selected VOS.
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