MWL is dedicated to the National Weather Service (NWS) Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Program, Port Meteorological Officers (PMOs), cooperating ship officers, and their vessels.

Through the MWL, the VOS program recognizes ship officers for their efforts as voluntary weather observers, and allows the NWS to maintain contact and communicate with over 10,000 shipboard observers worldwide in the merchant marine, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps, United States Coast Guard, United States Navy, and others.

MWL is currently published triannually and is distributed via email to mariners, marine institutions, the shipping industry, scientists, educational and research facilities, libraries, government agencies, and offices worldwide in a digital high resolution format.

[2] Another section was the Monthly Weather Log which documented significant extratropical and tropical cyclone occurrences across the northern Pacific and north Atlantic oceans through the summer of 1995.

[3] Maps of cyclone tracks were included within the Marine Weather Review section.

[4] Between July 1973 and 1995, a Hurricane Alley section was added in order to document recent global tropical cyclone occurrences since the publishing of the previous issue.

From the late 1980s through April 1998, a Whale Oil & Wicks column, authored by Elinor DeWire, detailed lighthouses and their keepers.