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
Pacific Ocean a new ocean. He named it "Mar del Sur" (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian ("Spanish") expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519. Magellan called the ocean "Pacífico" (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the "Sea of Magellan" in his honor until the eighteenth century. Although Magellan