International list of Voluntary Observing Ships Metadata fields & descriptions, exchange formats and code tables. Metadata Format Version 04. (Document Revision 4.2) .

Abstract

WMO maintains a catalogue of ships participating in the global Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Scheme. The catalogue is produced from the national VOS lists submitted by WMO Members. The catalogue, which contains a comprehensive range of ship’s metadata, was originally available as a WMO publication, WMO-No. 47 (commonly referred to as Pub 47). Due to increasing printing and distribution costs, the publication was suspended in the late 1990s. An electronic version of the catalogue became available on the WMO website < http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/ois/pub47/pub47-home.htm > during 2003. Despite the changed method of distribution, the electronic file retains the name of the original publication. Because of changing demands for ship’s metadata, the Ship Observations Team (SOT) formed a Task Team at SOT-II (July 2003, London, UK) to revise the metadata requirements of WMO-No. 47. The proposed changes were subsequently approved at JCOMM-II (September 2006, Halifax, Canada). This document describes the field descriptions, presentation layout and file exchange formats for WMO-No. 47, Metadata Format Version 04, approved at JCOMM-II. These changes come into effect on 1 June 2013. Summary of changes in this version 1. Type of meteorological reporting ships vsslM (Code Table 2202): a. Add new code 80 for manually reporting third party support ship. b. Add new code 85 for AWS-equipped third party support ship. 2. Exposure of the hygrometer hgrE, exposure of the dry-bulb thermometer thmE (Code Table 0801) a. Add new code HH for hand held digital thermometer/humidity sensor. b. Add new code RS for radiation shield (e.g. cylindrical / Gill multi-plate radiation shield). 3. Recruiting country rcnty, country of registration reg (Code Table 1801) a. Add new code ZZ for third party support ships. 4. Change in the location referenced in the XML Schema namespace variable.