In article ,
bobharvey writes:
|
| Between 1968 and 1971 I made 4-hourly reports of sea temperature,
| atmospheric pressure, wind direction and strength, precipitation and
| cloud cover by telegram to the Met office from merchant ships. These
| were voluntary observations. The practice persisted into the 1990s -
| I was on a research ship doing it in 1994 - but appears to be
| completely dead now. There are, in any case, few British merchant
| ships to join in.

Yes. The trouble with purely surface observations is that they give
a good idea of how the weather is changing at the time, but very
little information on what it is going to do 24 hours hence. That
information WAS useful - for maritime and aerial safety - but wasn't
enough to make the computer-based forecasts useful.

The satellite data allowed a guess at the water vapour content and
upper air temperatures, plus probably other important figures, which
changed the feasibility of using computers.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.