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Published online 9 June 2009 | 459, 759 (2009) | doi:10.1038/459759a
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Last weather ship faces closure
Oceanographers rally to try to save Norwegian vessel.
Leading climate scientists and oceanographers are urging the Norwegian government to revise or postpone the decommissioning of the world's last stationary weather ship.
Located at 66 ° N in the Norwegian Sea, some 450 kilometres off the coast, the M/V Polarfront maintains Station M (Mike), the last of what was a network of 13 weather stations in the North Atlantic.
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If Oceanographers who use this data from around the world each contributed $100 from their grant to this program, it could probably be sustained. Why should Norway's granting agencies bear the mistakes of the loss of all the other weather ships. If we put our heads together, we can save this resource, all for the cost of a spindle of blank CDs or DVDs. Concerned scientists just need to find the mechanism to funnel cash from grants stationary supplies to the weather ship program. As Tom Rossby said, this resource is too valuable to loose, so let's save it.
I agree that a mechanism should be found to support the Polarfront, but it is unlikely that this could be done before the end of the year. A delay in the withdrawal of the ship is needed to allow time for either a) alternative sources of funding to be found or b) suitable exit strategies to be put in place to ensure continuity of the various long term time series. Any replacement technology (e.g. moorings) should have a year or so overlap with the ship's systems. As well as the 60 year hydrographic record, the ship has been used to obtain 30 years of greenhouse gas sampling and 30 years of wave records. See http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/ooc/CRUISES/HiWASE/index.php By the way - I was slightly mis-quoted in the article. "Drifting vessels" should have been "drifting buoys".