A ship is a difficult place to take meaningful meteorological measurements. Meteorological measurements in this context are the basic quantities necessary to define the wind, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and rainfall. We seek to make these measurements to achieve “climate” accuracy in representation of conditions over the ocean without errors caused by ship effects.
A ship has severe flow distortion. It is a heat island with smoke contamination, shadows, and reflecting surfaces. Therefore, the marine meteorological instrumentation combines proven weather instruments at selected locations on the ship, underway calibrations, and extensive post analysis in order to derive the necessary data quality. Often, redundant sensors are deployed at different locations and their data merged according to relative winds and other conditions.