Editing Weather ship (section)

==Use in research==
[[Image:DorothyJul231966ESSA1.png|thumb|right|[[Weather satellite]] image of Dorothy on June 23, 1966]]
Beginning in 1951, British ocean weather vessels began oceanographic research, such as monitoring [[plankton]], casting of drift bottles, and sampling [[seawater]]. In July 1952, as part of a research project on birds by Cambridge University, twenty [[shearwater]]s were taken more than {{convert|161|km|mi}} offshore in British weather ships, before being released to see how quickly they would return to their nests, which were more than {{convert|720|km|mi}} away on [[Skokholm]] Island. 18 of the twenty returned, the first in just 36 hours. During 1954, British weather ocean vessels began to measure [[sea surface temperature]] gradients and monitored [[wind wave|ocean wave]]s.<ref name="BritishShips"/>  In 1960, weather ships proved to be helpful in [[naval architecture|ship design]] through a series of recordings made on [[punched tape|paper tape]] which evaluated wave height, [[grade (slope)|pitch]], and roll.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oD7wW7Gll-IC&pg=PA1329|magazine=New Scientist|page=1329|date=May 26, 1960|title=What Makes a Good Seaboat?|volume=7|publisher=The New Scientist|issue=184}}</ref>  They were also useful in wind and wave studies, as they did not avoid weather systems like merchant ships tended to and were considered a valuable resource.<ref name="wave">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8sHp9ml7G6YC&pg=PA371|pages=369–371|title=Ocean surface waves: their physics and prediction|author=Stanislaw R. Massel|year=1996|publisher=World Scientific|isbn=978-981-02-2109-6}}</ref>

In 1962, British weather vessels measured sea temperature and salinity values from the surface down to {{convert|3000|m|ft}} as part of their duties.<ref name="BritishShips"/>  Upper air soundings launched from weather ship E ("Echo") were of great utility in determining the cyclone phase of [[1966 Atlantic hurricane season#Hurricane Dorothy|Hurricane Dorothy]] in 1966.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/095/mwr-095-03-0121.pdf|title=Some Aspects of the Development of Hurricane Dorothy|author=Carl. O. Erickson|pages=121–130|journal=[[Monthly Weather Review]]|date=March 1967|volume=95|access-date=January 18, 2011|issue=3|doi=10.1175/1520-0493(1967)095<0121:SAOTDO>2.3.CO;2|bibcode = 1967MWRv...95..121E|citeseerx=10.1.1.395.1891}}</ref>  During 1971, British weather ships sampled the upper {{convert|500|m|ft}} of the ocean to investigate plankton distribution by depth. In 1972, the Joint Air-Sea Interaction Experiment (JASIN) utilized special observations from weather ships for their research.<ref name="BritishShips"/><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KUknE_FMwf8C&pg=PA110|title=Satellite oceanic remote sensing|author=Barry Saltzman|page=110|isbn=978-0-12-018827-7|publisher=Academic Press|year=1985}}</ref>  More recently, in support of climate research, 20&nbsp;years of data from the [[Station P (ocean measurement site)|ocean vessel P ("Papa")]] was compared to nearby voluntary weather observations from mobile ships within the [[International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set]] to check for biases in mobile ship observations over that time frame.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bs8hAwAAQBAJ|page=57|author=Hans von Storc and Francis W. Zwiers|title=Statistical analysis in climate research|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2001|access-date=January 18, 2011|isbn=978-0-521-01230-0}}</ref>