The International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Dataset (ICOADS) Release 3.0 contains large volumes of marine observation data and covers the time period from 1662 to present. Observations from ships, drifting buoys, and moored buoys are transmitted through the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) and collected by NCEI for near-real-time ICOADS monthly updates. The GTS data from ICOADS are the key component of many analysis products including the NOAA/NCEI Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) and Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST). Traditionally the GTS data for ICOADS are in the ASCII-based Traditional Alphanumeric Code (TAC) format but the TAC drifting buoy reports have dropped dramatically (by 10% in area coverage) since November 2016 due to a format switch from TAC to the Binary Universal Form for the Representation (BUFR) of meteorological data format. The data drop in TAC based data affects the operational OISST quality; for example, a cold bias in OISST was reported for certain regions and time periods.
In this presentation, we will describe the BUFR decoding process for drifting buoys, moored buoys and ship data at NCEI, and the enhancements gained from the format change. It will also be demonstrated that with the BUFR decoding, the majority of the lost drifting buoy reports in the TAC stream have been recovered. The impacts of adding the BUFR data on OISST and ERSST are assessed on the global and local scales since 2016.
Key word: ICOADS, sea surface temperature, BUFR, OISST, ERSST
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