The "Weather war" in the Arctic is often put in the shadows of the more spectacular battles of the seas. However both the Germans and the Allies made a considerable effort in getting weather information from around the Arctic. Reliable weather information from ground stations, ships and planes was (and is still) of utmost importance for forecasting the weather in the area. The Germans had several weather ships like Wuppertal, manned stations on the Svalbard islands, Bear Island, Hopen, Greenland and Franz Jofef's Land during the war. On Spitsbergen alone there was 4 manned stations on different locations and 4 unnmanned stations (all of them not at the same time though). On Jan Mayen Island the Norwegians abandonded their weather station at the outbreak of war, but the allies soon found out that this was not so smart, so a Norwegian garrison was soon put there to give weather information from the area throughout the war. Later the Americans put a "Huff-Duff" homing station on the island to decect the German activity in this field. Right under their nose, one of the uboats I mentioned earlier, (U-992) installed an automatic weather Station (WFL Walter) in the autumn of 1944. The signals from the station was not detected by the Americans because it was in the shadow of the 2277 m high volcano Beerenberg.
On other locations where it was possible to land a plane the Germans also installed another type of automatic weater station ("Kröten" (toads)). All in all it boils down to that both sides considered the weater information of great importance. I believe this is one of the reasons why they tried so hard to find the Wuppertal, but I also believe the 21 persons onboard was considered worth rescuing.
I will give the book Von Nanok Bis Eismitte by Franz Selinger (Schriften des Deutschen Schiffartsmuseums Band 53, 2001) my warmest recommendations, it's a most thorough work on this subject.

Rgds
Vidar