Discussions on Meteorology

dsinclair,

I don't think there's one already available - I've cc'd in the Boats commons incase anyone there knows of something.

But you can always create your own Shipping region type if you wish.  

I don't think there's anything like this currently, but I'm a little concerned about conflating a geographical region which is controlled by a single authority like the UK Met Office with a more general usage like locating shipwrecks since a) they can change them whenever they want and b) they don't need to align with common usage.  If someone sank "off Fastnet,"  they're probably somewhere within a certain radius of Fastnet Rock, not necessarily in the rectangular with Fastnet Rock at one corner. Similarly, I'm sure the Irish don't consider the waters off Cork to be called "Fastnet."

I think it would be better to identify them as explicitly related to weather forecasting or the authority that defined them and have them dated for when they were created/changed.  It would also be useful to annotate them with what they're named after to help tie them back to natural features.  As an example, I've associated the UK Met "Dogger" with "Dogger Bank."

Thanks for this. I've been on holiday and away from the net which partially explains the delay in my reply. Maybe I was going to fast on this, and I began to expect a shaky reply to this, and thus understand your concern. I went to Iceland which is also affected by these demarcations. I have looked at a number of sites for other countries and so far have failed to find anything similar to the UK system. Ireland it apopears just designates the immediate coastal waters.

At first sight not even the US, Australia, New Zealand and other countries affected by UK methods appear to have similar designations.

Many are of course being replaced by oil blocks, which leaves other areas with no designation at all. Maybe I need time to research this more - probably Marine specialists such as scientists and geologists can suggest designations for the huge % of the world which is water ! 

Here's what the forecast zones look like for the waters near me http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/zone/wrdoffmz.htm.  This is the offshore forecast map, so the white strip near the coast represents the coastal forecast zones (out to 25 nm).

The zones are often named by features on their boundaries and tend not to have simple names (e.g. "Baltimore Canyon to the Hague Line south of 1000 fathoms"), although a few have simple names which match up with geographic features like "Georges Banks." Coastal zones tend to have follow the longer boundary oriented naming e.g. "Merrimack River to Cape Cod out to 25 nm" Except for the ones which match up with a geographical feature, I've never heard anyone use them for anything other than weather forecasting.

Thanks.

I think I did catch a similar page on US waters briefly, and thought that anything so complex will sink my idea. You mentioned Irish waters. No doubt those areas (which appear to have no coastal waters)  around some Carribean neighbours could raise some problems too. Can we just find a way of adding the regions to the weather forecasts of each country that uses such designations and leave it at that !

I've added the meteorology domain since this is much more about weather than about boats.

I don't think it really needs to be that complex.  The names, even if they are long, are just names.  I think the important defining characteristics are:

• Name
• Description (optional - could just use the aliases for a longer version of the name)
• Geographic bounds
• Meteorological service that defined the area (since multiple services may have different names for the same area)

The type should have an included type of Location, which will take care of most of this automatically.  If it turned out to be necessary later, you could add dates valid or some other way of indicating changing areas over time (ie . change the included type to Dated Location).

For the UK Met, the marine forecasts include not only the shipping forecasts, but also the high seas forecasts http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/guide/highseas/key.html and the inshore waters forecast http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/guide/inshore/key.html

Thanks

Seems to work a treat !