Weather

[ETsd4]

Just uploading all the weather data 1939-1945 the National Climatic Data Center has given me. (ca. 1GB)

Here an example of Apr 1943
The given txt-file is in the "icoads 2.5" format (International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) and has several nfos about date, wave height, wind-speed, air pressure, locations, reported ship, etc etc.

Here is the beginning of Apr 1943. The size of Apr-1943-file is 10 MB.

194304  2200 1900  7280 0406   310ALBATROSS0333155 10      10052    4 289  2891 289   278                    165 25792245126 1 0                   111111371AAA11111AAAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0 21168720301041943  BOMBAY              04NW 01B      10052 084  084 82
194304  2200  690  7980 0406   310LUCIA    0332255 10      10123    4 300  2831 278                          165 29369245126 1 0                   1F1111171AAA1111AAAAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0 21178490301041943  COLOMBO             04SW 01b      10123 086  083
194304010000 5590  -480 0406   310ARCHER   0332935190096   10045    4  89   831  78                          165 14154245126 1 0                   1F15111111AA1111AAAAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0 21169200301041943  GREENOCK            01WNW08oq 04  10045 048  047
194304010000 5150 17950 0401   2 917008      0110619009471 10091    0  22   22   22      8    2              165 12319195  1 0 0                   2F111131111A1111A1AAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0                 10017008705        -                       2172
194304010000 5250-17750 0401   2 951017      01406 46098 2 10210    0   0    0    0      6    50             165 12427195  1 0 0                   2F111131111A1111A1AAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0                 1005101702600      -                       2170
194304010000 5250-17450 040163 2 922084      03616  0097 3 10244    0  28    6  -31    448 5                 165 12424195  1 0 0       K4          21111111111A111111AAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0     663         06522084032                                2170
194304010000 4300 13560 0400   2           250250  80098 0 10231    0  22              12100  04             165 15535732 57 5 0       G6          211111F1111A11AA11AAA      27610                                                                       366                                                              99 01019D00F32302060901010101090901010901010009098080800904800009800909090980808080808000
194304010000 4350 -6250 040166 2 912159      02706 26097 1          0                  113 1  00             165 17132195  1 0 0       H4          11F11FF1111AAAAA11AAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0     666            1215901100272-                          1231
194304010000 4850 -5450 0401   2 935009      03406159094   10003    0 -22  -28  -39   -118    2              165 17284195  1 0 0       H8          1111411111AA111111AAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0                 08835009035        -                       1238
194304010000 3280 -7990 0406   310ARETHUSA 0332035 26096   10261    4 244  2111 195   156                    165 20629245126 1 0                   1111111111AA11111AAAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0 21169323331031943  CHARLESTON          20SSW02bc 06  10261 076  070 60
194304010000 3280 -7990 0406   310NIGERIA  0332035 10      10195    4 194  1891 186                          165 20629245126 1 0                   1F1111111AAA1111AAAAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0 21182853431031943  CHARLESTON          20SSW01b      10195 067  066
194304010000 3250 -6550 040166 2 943022      02706 72096 2 10203    0 189  161  144   1786 1  00             165 20725195  1 0 0       F6          11111111114A111111AAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0     666         0754302202100244-                          1162
194304010000 2640  5640 0406   310DAUNTLESS0333615  0097   10161    4 228  2221 219   211                    165 21966245126 1 0                   1111111111AA11111AAAA      276                                                                         366                                                              99 0 21173140201041943  KHOR KUWAI          04C  00bc 08  10161 073  072 70
194304010000 2624  5665 0403   310ALAUNIA  0333615  0      10130    4 211  2001 195                          165 21966245126 1 0                   1F1111111AAA1111AAAAA      276

Txt-format description here: http://icoads.noaa.gov/e-doc/imma/R2.5-imma_short.pdf

[Sailor Steve]

Does the data exist for every location for every day? The weather in the North Sea and the weather in the South Atlantic were certainly not the same. I love the idea of this, but if the information is incomplete some of it will necessarily be ahistorical.

While modern real-time weather is not the same as what happened seventy years ago it has the advantage of being recorded everywhere at once, and updatable minute-by-minute for any location in the world.

[mobucks]

if i save out at sea, and reload that game, 90% of the time the weather will change drasticly. Seems like a bug, but worth considering, how any changes to weather will be kicked in the pants by this broken game.

(yes im in a mood, my revisit to SH5 has been painful to say the least)

[ETsd4]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Does the data exist for every location for every day?

No, according to the statistics i have here 58 datas for every hour of the day, for every day of the year 1939-1945. Approximately 3.5 million datasets in total.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The weather in the North Sea and the weather in the South Atlantic were certainly not the same.

Thats right. What i have to do is to interpolate the non-existing datasets from old & future data, from datasets of nearby locations, etc. I will go for 1 weather/wave-dataset for every latitude x longitude of the atlantic, north-sea, baltic-sea, Mediterranean, black sea, etc.

[Sailor Steve]

Cool. That's a lot of work, and my hat's off to you.

My only other concern is that being that precise means the weather might be a little predictable.

[Pintea]

Very nice find...however I doubt it can be modded, only maybe if TDW replaces the weather generation mechanism with his dll injector.

[dcb]

And this brings us to another limitation of the game engine: wind speed being capped at 15 m/s and the engine's inability to emulate the natural behavior of ships in rough seas.

What good will it be if we know there was a monster storm in November 1941, when all we can have is the same moderate swell?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by dcb

And this brings us to another limitation of the game engine: wind speed being capped at 15 m/s and the engine's inability to emulate the natural behavior of ships in rough seas.

What good will it be if we know there was a monster storm in November 1941, when all we can have is the same moderate swell?

There was a mod for SH3 that doubled the wave height at the same wind speed, and SH3 Commander modified it by season. Could not the same be done for SH5?

[ETsd4]

There is a problem with the vast number of 416,2 million weather-datasets i have to generate to cover the Atlantic area in the time period of Sep'39-Mai'45.

The Atlantic with adjacent seas (black-sea, hudson-bay, north-sea, baltic-sea etc.) has an area of 106 Mill Km^2.
If i go for 1 dataset (waveheight/cloudcover/precipitation/windspeed/winddirection/kind of precipitation etc.) of each longitude/latitude for each hour of the Atlantic i have to generate 8500 datasets for 1 hour to cover the whole Atlantic area + adjacent seas. 1 dataset covers an area of 12500 km^2 (= area of 112km x 112 km).

8500 datasets x 24 hours x 30 days x 68 months = 416,2 Mill datasets

I would accept 7.5 million datasets because 7.5 million datas generate a mod-size of ca. 150 MB (one weather-dataset is 20Byte long, and the dataset is already in packed format).
I dont accept a mod-size of 1 GB or so. So my goal is to reduce 416,2 million datasets to max 7.5 million datasets.
Any thoughts?

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

My only other concern is that being that precise means the weather might be a little predictable.

I see no predictions here other than that you are a meteorologist or an ancient sailor with the ability to predict from realistic past and present weather the weather in the future. This would be no disadvantage but a nice sideeffect of a weather-mod with realistic weather-datas.