sliows this graphically; it indicates world merchant 

 ship density on June 12, 1964, and clearly 

 demonstrates that there are great areas of the 

 world oceans that are not covered by merchant 

 ships in appreciable numbers, or in some areas at 

 all. 



The WMO is looking into the possibility of 

 obtaining reports from world fishing fleets, some 

 of which operate, at least for part of the year, in 

 areas not frequented by merchant shipping.'' One 

 direction for expansion of this program should 

 therefore be the inclusion of ships not now 

 participating, particularly fishing fleets such as 

 those of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. 



As noted above, the Navy's program in the 

 analysis and prediction of near-surface ocean 

 thermal structure is data-limited. Needed data could 

 be provided by additional expendable bathyther- 

 mograph soundings (this equipment is described in 

 Chapter 5). Of the 125 bathythermographs re- 

 ported by Wolff the majority are provided by 

 naval vessels, with some reports from ships of 

 opportunity in a cooperative Navy-Bureau of 

 Commercial Fisheries program. Additional ocean 

 temperature data could be collected by expanding 

 these programs; this effort should be tailored to fill 

 in at least some of the gaps in data coverage. Work 

 should continue on the development of automatic 

 data encoding and transmitting devices. (See 

 Chapter 5.) Although the expendable bathyther- 

 mograph probe is lost in the data collection, 

 quantity production has reduced the cost to 

 approximately $20 per instrument. The installa- 

 tion of a relatively simple on-board launcher and 

 data recorder is estimated to cost approximately 

 $5,000. 



In addition to the temperature data in the 

 ocean's near-surface layers, broader data coverage 

 is required in the lower layers of the atmosphere; 

 this is now limited to the relatively few radio- 

 sondes launched from ships. The radiosonde obser- 

 vations are taken from the Coast Guard Ocean 

 Station Vessels, as well as by about 15 ESSA 

 teams aboard a limited number of MSTS, ESSA, 

 and merchant ships in the Pacific. Rough esti- 

 mates indicate that the equipment expended in a 

 shipboard radiosonde program costs about $40 per 



1966: Meteorological Observations from Mobile and 

 Fixed Ships, World Weather Watch Planning Report No. 

 7, World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzer- 

 land. 



Figure 13. Release of radiosonde aboard ship. 

 (ESSA photo) 



observation, with an additional cost of about 

 $100-150 for personnel. Additional sets of ship- 

 board receiving equipment which interprets the 

 data transmitted by balloon-carried instrumenta- 

 tion would probably cost (at today's prices) 

 somewhat less than $10,000 per installation. It 

 should be noted that a principal manpower cost in 

 connection with this program is "dead time" when 

 a merchant ship is in port; expansion of the 

 program to permit efficient transfer of the men 

 from ship to ship would reduce the labor cost per 

 observation. 



In certain coastal areas including the Gulf of 

 Mexico, platforms have been erected for the ex- 

 traction of oil and natural gas; at present a limited 

 number of offshore platforms are instrumented to 

 provide environmental data for major forecasting 

 programs. For example, ESSA's New Orleans of- 

 fice regularly receives standard meteorological data 



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