What we do have are some relatively scanty observations of the surface movements over the tropical Pacific based on volunteer observers on merchant ships.

Bill Gregway, a retired draftsman who serves as a volunteer observer for the National Weather Service, concurred.

Other charges were that volunteer observers at polling places had been beaten in some precincts by thugs said to have been hired by the Democratic Justice Party.

The effectiveness of unpaid volunteer observers is doubtful.

Some 950 volunteer observers carried out 79,000 surveys, for fixed 20-minute periods in 1700 three-hectare locations over Australia.

The matter surfaced last week at the county's ballot recount, where Mr. Jacobs was as a volunteer observer.

Mass Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires (known as directives).

"We have a lot of people in the community who are having to buy new thermometers," said Adrienne Fowler, whose husband, Roland, is a volunteer observer in Embarrass for the National Weather Service.

Working with volunteer observers, Johnson used image intensifier equipment to measure the volunteer observer's ability to identify scale model targets under various conditions.

The idea of an Australian bird atlas based on data collected by volunteer observers (atlassers) was first mooted in 1972.