Offshore Weather Services provided weather forecasting services and the on board weather forecaster for the installation of the 37,000ton Chevron Wheatstone gas production topsides over the NW Shelf, Australia. Heerema Marine Contractors Nederland SE (HMC) were contracted by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering to bring the topsides from the fabrication yard in Korea and do the installation to the SGS (Steel Gravity Structure) that had been pre-installed (by HMC) in early September 2014.

The topsides were towed by three tugs and made good progress down the East China Sea and the east coast of the Philippines before passing through the Sulu and Java Sea on their way to the Wheatstone field. OWS provided the weather forecast services for this voyage as the vessels passed safely ahead of Super Typhoon MAYSAK over the North West Pacific Ocean and arrived at the Wheatstone location on the 08^th April as another tropical cyclone (IKOLA) was dissipating 1000nm to the southwest of the site.

Peter Wellby, Offshore Weather Services Operations Manager sailed with the HMC installation engineers from Dampier on the command vessel Southern Ocean a few days before the arrival of the topsides and provided the site weather forecasts, detailed daily weather briefings and consultation leading up to the float over operation. Working closely with the HMC Marine Engineers and using sophisticated atmospheric and wave models, spectral wave analysis techniques and vessel motion simulation suitable weather ‘windows’ were determined.

The weather conditions during the actual operation were near perfect with long period W’ly swell produced a few days earlier by TC IKOLA decreasing and the prevailing SW’ly swell from the Southern Ocean at a seasonal low. Even the wind Gods were kind producing light, cooling winds that provided a comfortable working environment.

This is the third float over operation that Peter has worked closely with HMC in achieving a safe and successful operation. The other operations were the Malampaya – Shell, Philippines and North Rankin B – Woodside, Australia.

In January 2015 Offshore Weather Services Managing Director and Certified Meteorological Consultant, Peter Wellby attended the Annual American Meteorological Society Conference held this year in Phoenix, Arizona. As usual the conference was well attended and informative and allowed an opportunity to catch up with acquaintances and to be informed about the latest developments within the meteorological, oceanographic and climate disciplines.

Offshore Weather Services continues to enhance its wave modelling skills in line with the company’s objective to provide clients with accurate wind and wave forecasts.  OWS Numerical Modelling Specialist Dr. Simon Caine and Marine Forecaster Alistair McKelvie recently attended the ‘Wave Modelling Workshop with WAVEWATCH III’ at the <a title="COEST" href="http://www.swinburne.edu click to read more.au/science-engineering-technology/oceanography/”>Centre for Ocean Engineering, Science and Technology (COEST) Swinburne University on 17-21 November 2014.

The 5-day wave modelling workshop was a collaboration between COEST of Swinburne University and NCEP/NOAA.  It was run by Prof. Alex Babanin and Dr. Stefan Zieger from Swinburne University, and Dr. Andre van der Westhuysen from the WWIII development group at NOAA.  The workshop discussed the theoretical and practical introduction to the model and included information on recent development.

Knowledge and skills learned from the workshop are taken on board by Simon and are currently being integrated in the OWS wave models, while Alistair is working on the new wave system tracking feature.

Peter Wellby, Eric Tiong Dave Duncalf, and Alistair McKelvie were amongst the meteorology experts that attended the 8^th Annual CAWCR Workshop held at the Bureau of Meteorology office in Melbourne on 10-12 November 2014.

The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) is a partnership between the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.  The annual workshop brings together a large number of Australian national experts from the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Australian universities and research centres, private weather service providers as well as a number of prominent overseas scientists.

The theme of this year’s workshop was ‘Coasts and Extremes,’ which included extreme weather due to tropical cyclones, storm surge, wind-waves and tsunamis, coincident extremes, real-time forecasting and coastal adaptation, future changes in ocean temperature and acidity and renewable energy.

Andre van der Westhuysen from NOAA was the keynote speaker and his insight into the operational surge and wave models was extremely interesting and useful to the OWS Operational Forecast Centre in Melbourne. The last two days focused on Tropical Cyclones that are very relevant to OWS tropical cyclone track forecasting.

Peter, Eric, Dave and Alistair’s attendance to this workshop ensures OWS is using the latest techniques in marine weather wind and wave forecasting.