Weather buoy tropical Pacific Ocean helped study the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Moored weather buoys range from in diameter, while drifting buoys are smaller, with diameters of . Drifting buoys are the dominant form of weather buoy in sheer number, with 1250 located worldwide. Wind data from buoys has smaller error than that from ships. There are differences in the values of sea surface temperature measurements between the two platforms as well, relating to the depth of the measurement and whether or not the water is heated by the ship which measures the quantity. The first known proposal for surface weather observations at
Marine weather forecasting that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be polar orbiting, covering the entire Earth asynchronously, or geostationary, hovering over the same spot on the equator. Meteorological satellites see more than clouds and cloud systems. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the atmospheric column began to be retrieved by satellites from the eastern Atlantic and most of the Pacific Ocean, which led to significant forecast improvements. City lights, fires, effects of pollution, auroras, sand and dust storms, snow cover, ice mapping, boundaries of ocean currents, energy flows, etc.,