Editing Ship (section)

===Special purpose vessels===
{{Main|Weather ship}}
[[File:Polarfront.jpg|thumb|The weather ship [[MS Polarfront|MS ''Polarfront'']] at sea.]]
A [[weather ship]] was a ship stationed in the [[ocean]] as a platform for surface and upper air meteorological observations for use in [[marine weather forecasting]]. Surface weather observations were taken hourly, and four radiosonde releases occurred daily.<ref name="cg" />  It was also meant to aid in search and rescue operations and to support transatlantic flights.<ref name="cg" /><ref name="pop" />  Proposed as early as 1927 by the [[aviation]] community,<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ICoDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA121|page=121|date=August 1927|magazine=Popular Science|publisher=Popular Science Publishing Company, Inc.|volume=111|issue=2|title=The First Plane to Germany|author=George Lee Dowd, Jr.}}</ref> the establishment of weather ships proved to be so useful during [[World War II]] that the [[International Civil Aviation Organization]] (ICAO) established a global network of weather ships in 1948, with 13 to be supplied by the United States.<ref name="pop" /> This number was eventually negotiated down to nine.<ref name="Roll" />

The weather ship crews were normally at sea for three weeks at a time, returning to port for 10-day stretches.<ref name="cg" />  Weather ship observations proved to be helpful in wind and wave studies, as they did not avoid weather systems like other ships tended to for safety reasons.<ref name="Massel" />  They were also helpful in monitoring storms at sea, such as [[tropical cyclone]]s.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/095/mwr-095-03-0121.pdf|title=Some Aspects of the Development of Hurricane Dorothy|author=Carl O. Erickson|pages=121–30|journal=[[Monthly Weather Review]]|date=March 1967|volume=95|issue=3|access-date=2011-01-18|doi=10.1175/1520-0493(1967)095<0121:SAOTDO>2.3.CO;2|bibcode=1967MWRv...95..121E|citeseerx=10.1.1.395.1891}}</ref>  The removal of a weather ship became a negative factor in forecasts leading up to the [[Great Storm of 1987]].<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nCLWnFozM6EC&pg=PA25|title=Romeo Would Have Spied the Storm|magazine=New Scientist|date=1987-10-22|page=22|volume=116|issue=1583|publisher=IPC Magazines}}{{Dead link|date=November 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>  Beginning in the 1970s, their role became largely superseded by [[weather buoy]]s due to the ships' significant cost.<ref name="NRC" />  The agreement of the use of weather ships by the international community ended in 1990. The last weather ship was ''[[Polarfront]]'', known as weather station M ("Mike"), which was put out of operation on 1 January 2010. Weather observations from ships continue from a fleet of [[Voluntary observing ship program|voluntary merchant vessels]] in routine commercial operation.