Drs. Weller and Hosom request funding for initial development of documentation for Improved Meteorological (IMET) sensors. More accurate meteorological data is required for many of the research efforts planned as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), which will begin field experiments in 1992. Although many sensors are available commercially, their accuracy and calibration for ships and buoys had not been tested until recently. Work completed in an initial grant to the PI's (OCE- 87-09614) quantified the performance characteristics of some of the buoy and ship sensors, and cooperation between the PI's and manufacturers resulted in improvements to the sensors. Development of a data logging system that is applicable to any sensor was also completed and licensed to a commercial manufacturer. Although the IMET sensors are now available commercially, they will not function at specified WOCE standards without proper calibration and installation, which will be unique for each UNOLS vessel. As stated in the proposal, "Since the development of IMET was carried out at WHOI, the expertise to document the system and carry out initial system installation on several ships currently resides only at WHOI." This proposal requests funds to begin the documentation of the expertise that has been developed at WHOI so that the information will be available for all UNOLS operators. This information in needed to provide accurate meteorological data to researchers as soon as possible.
