The Met Office has developed a number of early warning systems
to help reduce the effects of natural disasters, such as flooding
due to storms and abnormally high sea levels. One such system is
the network of Marine Automatic Weather Stations (MAWS) which
are
deployed mainly on the edge of the UK continental shelf, as
shown below.
The network includes eleven moored buoys, nine of which
are in open-ocean locations mostly to the west of the British Isles,
and
two
in coastal inshore waters. Two of the open-ocean buoys
are operated jointly with Meteo-France in the Bay of Biscay.
Together with a further seven systems located on lightships
and islands, these automatic observing systems make up the MAWS
network.
The moored buoys also contribute to a European network of drifting
and moored buoys co-ordinated by the European
Group on Ocean Stations (EGOS),
which in turn functions as an action group of the joint WMO-IOC
Data Buoy Cooperation Panel
(DBCP).
Each automatic system measures air pressure, air and sea temperature,
humidity, wind speed and direction, and (with the exception of island
systems) wave height and period. Lightship systems additionally
measure visibility. All stations transmit their observations hourly
- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
All data transmitted by the MAWS are disseminated over the WMO Global
Telecommunication System (GTS). The data are used in numerical weather
prediction (NWP), to monitor developing weather conditions, to provide
information on the climatology of oceanic and coastal areas, and to
provide ground truth for satellite observations. Historical data from
the MAWS network are available from the Met Office. Recent data from
the buoys can be accessed through the NOAA National Data Buoy Center.
Over recent years the MAWS network has evolved,
with the aim of reducing the operational costs of the network,
while
improving the quality and range of data acquired. This is being
achieved through system upgrades and collaboration with other
organisations.
The Met Office is currently collaborating with the Irish
Marine Institute on the development of an Irish
Data Buoy Network. Together with the (Centre
for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS)
a
Deep
Ocean Monitoring System (DOMS) is also being developed to
explore the practicality of using moored buoys to make physical,
chemical
and biological oceanographic measurements as well as the standard
meteorological measurements.
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