Maritime weather data covering many of the world’s oceans and seas is available in Visual Crossing Weather Data Services for viewing, downloading and accessing via the Weather API. This article discusses the available data and the weather elements unique to maritime data.
Available maritime weather data
Maritime weather data in Visual Crossing Weather is sourced from sea and ocean-based weather observing stations plus remote sensing platforms such as satellites.
Maritime-based stations are located on buoys, oil platforms and other moored locations throughout the oceans. The locations match areas of high maritime vessel traffic or maritime activities such as offshore drilling and wind farms. There is a high concentration of station data in the Gulf of Mexico, Western Europe in the North Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea and the Pacific Ocean near land masses.
In addition, there are additional stations located in areas of meteorological interest. For example, there are many stations in the tropical locations near the equator to assist in tropical weather forecasting and recording for hurricanes, cyclones and other tropical storms.
Available maritime weather data elements
The Visual Crossing maritime data includes hourly core weather elements such as temperature, wind and precipitation amounts. In addition, the data offers specific elements for water bodies, including wave height and direction and swell height and direction. The wave and swell element are available only to certain subscription levels. For more information, please see our pricing page.
Wave heights and direction
waveheight – the height of the wind waves for the requested location in meters or feet. Daily values will be the mean of the hourly values.
wavedir – the direction that the waves are moving towards. Daily values will be the angular mean of the hourly values.
waveperiod – the amount of time between successive wind wave crests. Daily values will be the angular mean of the hourly values.
Swell heights and direction
swellheight – the height of the wind swell for the requested location in meters or feet. Daily values will be the mean of the hourly values.
swelldir – the direction that the swell are moving towards. Daily values will be the angular mean of the hourly values.
swellperiod – the amount of time between successive swell crests. Daily values will be the mean of the hourly values.
Requesting maritime elements using the Weather API
To request wave and swell elements from the Weather API, include the values in the ‘elements’ parameter of the request (see the Timeline Weather API documentation for more information on this parameter). You can combine the wave and swell elements with other weather elements such temperature, wind speed and precipitation. This Weather API request retrieve the data for latitude, longitude location 50.00835,-7.94565 for the data range June 1st 2016 to June 30th 2016 in CSV format. JSON format is available using the contentType parameter.
In most cases, it is necessary to provide a latitude,longitude location for the request, as addresses will not work correctly in oceanic and sea based locations.
https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline/50.00835,-7.94565/2016-06-01/2016-06-30?unitGroup=metric&key=YOUR_API_KEY&contentType=csv&include=days&elements=datetime,temp,waveheight,wavedir,waveperiod,swellheight,swelldir,swellperiod
Maritime weather forecast data
Our 15-day weather forecast is a truly global weather forecast and includes both land and ocean and sea based locations. Simply request the location by latitude,longitude to retrieve maritime weather forecast data.
Questions or need help?
If you have a question or need help, please post on our actively monitored forum for the fastest replies. You can also contact us via our support site or drop us an email at support@visualcrossing.com.