OPERATIONAL REVIEWWEATHER FORECASTING


Making the weather


work for you


Mankind cannot control the weather – yet – but we can do the next best thing: accurately predict when and where wind, waves and fog will occur. Chris Lewis analyses the importance of weather forecasting and its impact on heavy lift operations.


weather forecasts and sophisticated computer systems can help to predict the likely behaviour of a ship. Elizabeth Yule, operational meteorologist


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at the UK’s Met Office, said that the organisation provides a variety of weather forecasting services to mariners, such as transit forecasts giving expected conditions en route, and other forecasts used in the offshore industries. A shipping company can, for example, send the Met Office details of a planned


January/February 2017


eavy lift vessels and their cargoes are uniquely sensitive to weather conditions, as are the often complex and delicate lifting operations. Increasingly accurate


voyage and the date of departure and, within a few days, a detailed forecast of the expected wind and wave conditions along the route can be provided. The Met Office can provide information


on all sorts of weather, of course, but for shipping operators surface weather – windspeeds and direction, along with sea swell – is likely to be of most interest. Ice and snow are less of an issue – though


they can be for road transport – but fog might well be of interest for manoeuvres in port, or crane and discharge operations. Forecasting precisely where fog will occur in coastal areas can sometimes be tricky, though it is relatively easy to track over the sea. Short-term weather can be forecast with


a fair degree of accuracy and the data observed can also be fed back into the forecast model to improve it in future. The Met Office can also provide ship


operators with long-range forecasting based on its archived data. While it is not possible to forecast the specific weather on a particular day months hence, it can give a reasonable estimate of, for example, the probability of high winds at a specific period of the year. “Certain parts of the world do see similar conditions at certain times of year, but in other parts of the world – our part of the UK, for instance – it is very changeable,” said Yule. Loss adjusting and marine warranty


survey company MatthewsDaniel – which also provides a specialised weather service for upstream oil and gas and shipping industries worldwide – offers weather analytics at the pre-planning stage for expected weather and forecasting to avoid adverse conditions, using both global and regional models, and its own simulations. Weather forecasting is used for many


www.heavyliftpfi.com


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