by Isabel Houghton, Ph.D., SoFar Ocean
Over the past year, we’ve nearly tripled our coverage of buoys, with coverage across the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Southern Oceans (access data here). This extremely dense network of Spotter buoys enables us to obtain–in real-time–high fidelity observations of extreme ocean weather with unprecedented frequency.
Spotter buoys transmit several relevant marine weather variables describing the waves, wind, currents and surface temperature. Even better, not only does Spotter report (in real time) the bulk wave statistics such as significant wave height and peak period, but also the full two-dimensional (2D) wave spectrum. With all of this data in hand, in real-time, we can monitor and update our understanding of extreme weather. Let’s take a look at how the Spotter platform performed during a recent cyclone.
