Chapter 4 An Appraisal of Monitoring and Prediction Capabilities 



The activities of the Federal Government in 

 marine environmental prediction, described in 

 Chapter 3, have tended to develop into a military 

 system and a separate civil system, with consider- 

 able sharing in data collection. To continue to 

 insure responsiveness to rapidly-changing military 

 requirements as well as to provide adequate 

 priority for civil needs, the Nation must establish 

 suitable organizational arrangements. Our recom- 

 mendations on this issue are presented in detail in 

 Chapter 7. 



In this chapter we assess the present capabilities 

 for forecasting oceanographic and certain meteoro- 

 logical conditions. 



I. OCEAN TEMPERATURE STRUCTURE 



The panel has reviewed temperature-structure 

 forecasting programs and received detailed brief- 

 ings from the Navy, and it finds that this program 

 provides operationally useful forecasts. On the 

 basis of our evaluation, however, we have con- 

 cluded that present capabilities fall far short of 

 providing the accuracies required in forecasting 

 thermal structure in the ocean. Advanced proc- 

 essing and forecasting techniques are applied to 

 the available data, but progress is limited by the 

 relatively small number of observations and by 

 limited understanding of the pertinent physical 

 processes. 



II. SEA-STATE 



Techniques for sea-state forecasting^ were given 

 significant impetus during World War II and have 

 since been developed, principally by the Navy, to 

 yield useful operational forecasts. The ability to 

 forecast ocean-wave generation is seriously limited 

 by the relatively sparse wind data now reported 

 over the oceans. Verification of forecasts and 

 improvement of theory are also hampered by a 

 lack of wave spectrum data. The number of wind 

 observations could be increased by expanding the 

 ship-of-opportunity program. The ability to ob- 



serve the low-level wind structure in the atmo- 

 sphere from a ship would also provide a significant 

 contribution. 



Ml. OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMMEDIATE IM- 

 PROVEMENT 



We have noted, in our review of these programs, 

 that opportunities exist for immediate improve- 

 ments at relatively modest cost. The present 

 ability to analyze and predict sea surface condi- 

 tions is limited by the scarcity of surface ocean 

 and weather observations. The two cases cited 

 above are examples. As described in Chapter 2, 

 this data "gap" is also a severe limitation on our 

 ability to predict the weather. 



Captain Paul Wolff, Commanding Officer of the 

 Navy's Fleet Numerical Weather Central, has 

 described the availability of physical oceanographic 

 data in a recent report^ (amplified in his testimony 

 before the panel): 



about 1,000 unique ship reports (which describe 

 weather conditions plus sea state and sea tempera- 

 ture measurements), 125 ocean temperature versus 

 depth soundings (bathythermographs), and fifteen 

 shipboard radiosonde soundings (which contain 

 pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind meas- 

 urements in the atmosphere) every twelve hours. 



These figures refer primarily to the Northern 

 Hemisphere, and would only be changed in a small 

 way if Southern Hemisphere reports were in- 

 cluded. By comparing these data with results of a 

 survey reported by the World Meteorological 

 Organization (WMO)^ as well as other estimates it 

 appears that the vast majority (probably greater 

 than 90 per cent) of the "unique ship reports" are 

 made by merchant ships cooperating in the interna- 

 tional weather observing program of the WMO (see 

 Chapter 8). Figure 10 shows the geographical 



Sverdiup, H. if. and W. H. Munk, Wind, Sea, and 

 Swell: Theory of Relations for Forecasting, 1947, U.S. 

 Navy Hydrographic Office, Washington, D.C. 



''Wolff, Capt. Paul M., USN, 1967: Technical Note 

 No. 32, Oceanographic Data Collection, Fleet Numerical 

 Weather Facility, Monterey, California. 



^Hanzama, M., and T. H. Tourier, 1968: System for 

 the Collection of Ships' Weather Reports. World Weather 

 Watch Planning Report No. 25, World Meteorological 

 Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. 



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