Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
and climate conditions. In certain countries it is difficult to access such data as it is
top secret. In some aspects, weather forecasting is often seen as a product of war or
seen as the 'Daughter of Mars' [PEG 89]; conversely, it is also seen as being a
branch of geography that is used to make war.
Figure 3.1.
The WMO network. Data source: WMO,
http://www.wmo.ch/index-en.html (June 2005)
The global network map of the some 20,000 climatological stations that are
officially recognized by the WMO provides geographers with lots of useful
information (Figure 3.1). From the map it can be seen that there are more
climatological stations located on land than on the oceans, yet the oceans make up
more than 70% of the Earth's surface. As far as measurements on the oceans are
concerned, there is a network of 450 drifting weather buoys, and measurements are
taken on board more than 7,000 ships. It is also possible to see on the map that there
is an over-representation of climatological stations in the northern hemisphere,
especially in regions found at the middle latitudes. With this information in mind it
could be said that meteorological observation is a luxury, and is only reserved for
the richer, more economically developed countries. With this map it is also possible
to identify sparsely populated areas, such as Siberia and areas along the Trans-
Siberian route. One cannot help but notice that meteorological information is
discontinuous. For certain information, such as the information that is produced by
radiosonde exploration, the situation is much worse as there are not very many
climatological stations that provide data in this way (less than 500 of these stations
exist in the world; Pailleux, 2002). It is possible to find the same number of such
stations in Germany as there is in the whole of Africa. There are more of these
stations in the USA than can be found on the oceans. The problems that are
associated with the density of the network providing information relating to rainfall
(Figure 3.2) can be illustrated by using the example of the networks in Mato Grosso
