Marine meteorological observation methods

There are two kinds of observation: routine observation and unconventional observation. The former observes and publishes weather reports according to the time and content stipulated by the international unification, while the latter includes marine surveys, offshore observation experiments and observations of other non-dedicated ships. Among the conventional observations, merchant ships have the largest number of meteorological observations and accumulated records for nearly a hundred years. According to the statistics of the National Climate Center of the United States, since the 1970s, more than 9,000 sets of real-time weather reports have been obtained from the world's oceans every day, but such observations are discontinuous in time and unevenly distributed in space. After the Second World War, more than ten fixed-point meteorological ships were set up in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. With the increasing number of automatic buoy meteorological stations, high-quality continuous observation data can be obtained, but due to the scarcity of stations, it can not meet the needs of analysis and forecast (see the network of ocean observation stations for ground meteorological observation). Since the 1960s, with the launch and operational use of meteorological and ocean satellites, people can observe the atmosphere and ocean in a wide range at different heights in outer space, and directly or indirectly obtain the observed values of atmospheric temperature, humidity, wind speed, clouds, precipitation, sea surface temperature, sea surface wind speed, waves, currents, water levels, sea ice and other elements. Strict monitoring of disastrous weather systems such as tornadoes at sea, tropical storms and extratropical cyclones provides good conditions for the research and operational work of marine meteorology (see meteorological satellites and satellite meteorology).