Today shipping carrier Maersk announced that it will be releasing all historical and future weather observations into the public domain for free use by the scientific community around the world.
“Maersk crews and vessels have collected weather observations for years, and we are proud that we now can share these data and help researchers in gaining a better understanding of the impact climate change has on our surroundings,” said Aslak Ross, head of marine standards at Maersk.
By releasing its observations, Maersk will aid with climate research by providing weather data from the world’s oceans. Previously, scientists would obtain most of their data from satellite observations, but that had limitations. There also wasn’t much from ground level data in regards to weather in the oceans.
With the data from Maersk’s observations, the ocean weather data publicly available will increase by 28%.
The observations will provide a clearer understanding of how surface-level ocean conditions and the interaction with the atmosphere has changed.
Maersk has been collecting ocean weather observations since 2012. All 300 vessels owned by the company share data multiple times in a day. Between all the ships, more than 7,000 observations are shared daily by Maersk. Since it began collecting data, Maersk now has over 9 million observations.
The data will be shared via the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), which is run by UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
