Taking the temperature

In recent years I have become interested in the relationship between weather data and the potential output of wind and solar devices.  Today there are a variety of reporting mechanisms which provide regular and reliable data including automated weather stations, offshore buoys, satellites and the internet of things to which many small weather stations are connected.  All this stuff gets dumped into databases and is an incredible resource.

In the early seventies I had a brief career as a merchant seaman, by general agreement, this was not a good choice and a decade later I was working as a computer programmer where I was only a minor hazard to those around me.   However, the experience did give me an appreciation of conditions offshore where the wind can be smooth and steady and then become violent in a storm.  Offshore installations have to be built to withstand extreme conditions,

One of the more agreeable jobs on the morning eight to twelve watch was taking the sea temperature before the weather report was sent (in morse code) just before noon.  An alternative was chipping and scraping which was not agreeable.  This task was not without risk.  The ship was moving at around 14 knots and the drill was to throw a bucket on the end of a line ahead of the ship where with luck it might end up just below where you were standing and then haul it back onboard and poke it with a thermometer.  If you were not quick, the bucket went aft and became a small sea anchor.  The biggest risk was losing the bucket in which case one would have to explain to the bosun the loss a valuable item of equipment and request/steal a replacement.  A related problem was staying calm whilst spectators expected you to loose the bucket.   It was good practice to tie the shipboard end of the line to a railing, this cut down the loss of buckets but at the risk of getting fingers trapped between rope and railing.  In a calm sea it was not too difficult to stay dry, but if the ship was rolling and the bucket was full on arrival, there was a chance of a wet boiler suit.

I think that current practice for measuring sea water temperature is to have a sensor on a cooling water intake which takes the fun out the process at the expense of better data.  If the weather conditions where such that risk of bucket loss was high, then no data was collected.

This experience taught me to be both respectful and cautious of environmental data