Availability and Credibility of Martime Visibility Observations.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate existing maritime meteorological data and research efforts on various aspects of interest for the general problem of determining the effect of the environment on the operation of naval electro-optical systems. The areas of interest included visibility at sea, the credibility of existing visibility data, methods for accurately determining visibility at sea, cloud free lines of sight CFLOS, methods for extending visibilith measurements made in the visible to the infrared, precipitation data over oceans, lidar measurements of visibility, and the sources of maritime meteorological observations. The credibility of existing visibility measurements is important for the accurate determination of the probabilities that certain ranges of visibility will be encountered. Modified author abstract