AVOS Contract Win in United Kingdom

AXYS Technologies Inc. (AXYS) announced today that the UK Met Office located in Exeter, UK, has selected an AVOS™ shipboard weather monitoring system for use on one of its voluntary observing weather ships.

The weather monitoring system will be installed aboard a container vessel engaged on voyages between the UK and Canada and will measure, process, and transmit a variety of weather information including wind speed and direction, temperature, barometric pressure, sea surface temperature and relative humidity. This data will be transmitted to the Met Office in real time and then shared with other National Meteorological Centres via the Global Telecommunication System (GTS). The real time data will contribute to marine safety weather forecasts while the delayed mode data stored by the system will be used for longer-term climate studies and research.

The Voluntary Observing Ships' (VOS) Scheme is an international initiative by which ocean-going ships are recruited by National Meteorological Services to record and transmit shipboard weather observations. Until recently VOS reports could only be manually compiled so observation bias and input error occurred regularly; 20% of the observed data in Canada's VOS program was being rejected in quality control tests. AVOS™ is an automated weather station that transmits VOS program reports. Errors and standard reporting biases are reduced through the use of intuitive software and automated quality control protocols.

According to UK Met Office’s Sarah North, Marine Networks Manager, the availability of quality observations from data sparse ocean areas has long been a concern to meteorological services around the world. The UK Met Office is therefore undertaking a trial of the AXYS AVOS™ system with a view to further improving its global data coverage.

AXYS' Don Bryan, Manager of Marine Systems said: “AXYS is pleased to partner the UK Met Office on this project. AVOS™ is an extremely reliable and proven system in Canada with over 85 systems sold and we are pleased to see the emerging international acceptance of this solution. This latest installation should contribute to improving marine safety and long term understanding of the climate of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Notes to editors:

AXYS Technologies Inc. designs, manufactures, distributes and maintains remote environmental data acquisition, processing and telemetry systems. For further information contact AXYS at: info@axystechnologies.com or www.axystechnologies.com

The UK Met Office is one of the world's leading providers of environmental and weather-related services. Their solutions and services meet the needs of many communities of interest - from the general public, government and schools, through broadcasters and online media, to civil aviation and almost every other industry sector - in the UK and around the world. For further information visit the UK Met Office website at www.metoffice.gov.uk/

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View original news release:

UK Met Office AVOS™ Win (PDF 76 Kb)