Weather monitoring station 13010 of the Pirata programme is located at a place that does not really exist.
The Pirata buoys are named after music genres, and 13010 is known as Soul. It is famous for its location, at precisely zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude, a point known to cartographers as Null Island. Even though there is no actual island there, it is a convenient placename for a frequently used location. The zero-zero reading crops up frequently as an error, due to data being absent or software glitches.
The fictional Null Island occupies an undistinguished patch of ocean in the Gulf of Guinea, more than 300 miles (500km) from the nearest genuine land. But its location is visible thanks to the presence of Soul, a conical Autonomous Temperature Line Acquisition System (Atlas) buoy that projects almost 4 metres out of the water. The buoy constantly tracks wind speed and direction, air and sea temperature, and other weather variables.
An exclusion zone around the buoy prevents physical visits, but as Null Island is the supposed position of anyone without location data, it has been called one of the most visited places on Earth. It might not physically exist, but you can still get exact information on the current weather on Null Island.
