At Carnival UK we’re members of the Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) scheme whose members share meteorological observations while at sea. All our ships are members and for the very first time, every one received a Met Office Excellence Award for hitting targets for observation numbers and accuracy during 2018.
These ships send meteorological observations whilst at sea, which make a vital contribution to worldwide weather forecasting, ship routing and the safety of life at sea for all mariners. They’re also shared with other national met services around the world and are vital for other industries including transport (e.g. for ship building & routing), health & national security, to name a few. They are also required as supporting evidence for the decisions made by government in response to climate change.
Met Office’s Steve Bond said, “Whilst satellite data is valuable, it still needs to be calibrated & verified against on-the-ground, in-situ marine observations, particularly those transmitted from data-sparse areas that are outside normal shipping lanes. There are also some parameters, notably air pressure, that cannot be measured remotely by satellites, meaning that observations from VOS may be providing the only source of meteorological data in some ocean locations.” says the .
Our ships sent a combined total of 5,020 observations – an average of 502 observations per ship. This represents nearly 7% of all manual marine observations received from UK VOS ships in 2018. Topping the fleet were Britannia (986 obs), Arcadia (569 obs) and Oriana (530 obs).
The Met Office assigns each observation a quality score, measuring the accuracy and timeliness of the data. A good score is anything below 0.65. Our fleet had a combined annual average of 0.53 – an excellent achievement!