200065 Indian Ocean Weather Services
Indian Ocean Weather Services
Report No. 200065
REPORT 1
There are no radio stations transmitting reliable weather fax for the huge area of the Indian Ocean. Taipei and Beijing only cover the eastern part which is not sufficient. There is one station in India which is supposed to transmit weather information for the whole of the Indian Ocean but it has the following drawbacks:
- The transmitting power is very low such that one can hardly receive it clearly even when just south of Sri Lanka.
- The station's transmitting frequency is most unreliable and appears to drift.
- When it is supposed to transmit on the 14Khz frequency, the station will transmit on 7403Khz and vice versa. Sometimes it does not transmit at all.
- A station near the South of India would probably be more useful than the present one based at New Dehli.
There used to be a remote controlled station at Diego Garcia but it has now ceased transmission. There is therefore no other station in such a big ocean to help mariners by providing accurate weather information. What is the use of only collecting weather reports from ships and not returning any benefit of that information to them?
REPORT 2
The Clipper Round the World yacht race took a trade wind track around the globe, visiting the Seychelles and Durban, en route from Singapore to Cape Town. Our aim was to provide daily weather information to the race team and research weather information available on the Internet and the potential applications within the marine industry, asking questions on reliability and accuracy of the available data. Much of the world came through with flying colours but the Indian Ocean failed miserably! During pre-forecast research, the Clipper fleet's passage through the Indian Ocean seemed to be covered, even though by a limited number of previously untried sources. Almost spookily the data available on the Internet dried up almost as soon as the fleet had left Singapore. Although the fleet was not wholly reliant on the data being sent by myself, the outcome was perhaps the most definitive answer to a weather related problem. At the time, no matter how deep into the Internet you went, there seemed to be no data available which could be used for the Indian Ocean. It was only when the fleet departed Cape Town that the full daily forecast and information service was resumed.
On the fleet returning to Plymouth, debrief with the skippers and crew looked at the weather problem within the Indian Ocean. Even on leaving Hong Kong the fleet had difficulties receiving readable weather faxes, the problem only got worse as progress was made towards Singapore and beyond. Nothing was received from stations in China, from New Delhi and elsewhere. The problems were not just limited to fax services, voice services were also either non-existent or unreadable.