Maersk installs automated weather stations on 50 vessels

February 7, 2022: Danish carrier A.P.Moller-Maersk has, in collaboration with the National Meteorological Service of Germany, Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), installed automated weather stations (AWS) on 50 vessels.

While crossing the largest oceans, the vessels can transmit live data helping forecast weather and climate, according to an official statement from Maersk.

"All collected data is transmitted live to the National Meteorological Service of Germany, DWD, supporting their weather forecasts and climate science."

Maersk and DWD have collaborated on the project since 2019 with the German service providing the 50 systems being installed on the vessels.

“There is no doubt that climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the global community and it impacts our business as well as the societies and customers we serve and partner with to enable trade," says Aslak Ross, Head of Marine Standards, Maersk. "We have an ambitious strategy for our business to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2040, and we are proud to have our vessels and crews help researchers in gaining a better understanding of this key global challenge and the impact it has on our surroundings.”

Maersk vessels have also been operating within the global Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Scheme under the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) providing regular weather observations but it has been done manually resulting in a slow process of data sharing.

"By implementing AWS, the vessels can deliver precise high-quality and standardized data in real-time giving DWD useful insights about the current meteorological situation at sea. The data provided is shared globally with all members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)," the statement added.

Darin Figurskey, the global lead for Ship Observations Team (SOT) under GOOS and a forecaster himself at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), added: “The collaboration with Maersk continues to have a positive impact on the maritime industry. Additional observations on more vessels will help forecasters become more situationally aware, provide added information for forecasts, warnings, and numerical weather prediction, and ultimately help scientists understand more about our oceans and climate.”

Approximately 300 fully-owned Maersk vessels are gathering and sharing weather and sea-state observations with the VOS.

“As a global container logistics company, we are moving millions of containers across the oceans every year, and weather routing is extremely important to ensure safe travel of our crew and our customers’ cargo. If we can help facilitate even marginal improvements to the quality of weather routing services, these will be important levers in our constant efforts to improve the safety of our crews and assets,” said Aslak Ross.

Maersk had announced recently that it will release all historical and future ocean weather observations into the public domain (about 9 million) for free use by the scientific community around the globe.