Non-traditional usage of marine buoys

The National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) has a long history of operating and supporting a sustainable integrated environmental observing system that collects meteorological and oceanographic data in real-time parameters. NDBC has over 60 shore stations, over 70 moored buoys (3 to 12 meters in diameter), and has deployed drifting buoys and sub-surface profiling floats. All data from these stations are received and processed in realtime and provided to National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices around the country. These data are also used to feed numerical model prediction systems and are used as ground truth for other remote-sensed data. All data are sent to the NDBC Web site for public use and to the NOAA archive site for climate research. The authors discuss the use of buoys for voice communications.