Extended Abstract (56K)P2.19
Atovs awips bufr encoder and decoder
Awdhesh K. Sharma, NOAA/NESDIS, Suitland, MD; and T. Yu
ATOVS AWIPS BUFR ENCODER AND DECODER AK Sharma, NOAA/NESDIS/OSDPD T. Yu, Science and Technology Corporation
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Services (NOAA/NESDIS) generates and distributes atmospheric sounding products as a part of its operation for operating a fleet of civilian, Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) and providing users and researchers a suite of operational atmospheric and environmental data products. Sounding products are generated using the advance TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder (ATOVS) measurements. ATOVS consists of three instruments, two Advanced Microwave Sounding Units (AMSU), AMSU-A and AMSU-B, and a High-resolution Infrared Radiation Sounders (HIRS/3) instrument. The National Weather Services (NWS) deployed the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) in 1999 and commissioned in 2000 for supporting its field operations and services to Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) and River Forecast Centers (RFC).
The AWIPS program required ATOVS sounding products in the Binary Universal Form for the Representation of Meteorological data (BUFR) format. BUFR is one of the standard data formats used within the World Meteorological Office (WMO) for data exchange. ATOVS AWIPS area is specified as a region of 35 South to 75 North and 130 East to 35 West, this area is farther divided into 9 sub-area numbered from 1 to 9. Selected sounding products are first sorted according to the AWIPS sub-area identification numbers and encoded into the standard specified by the National Center for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) as BUFR messages. Each BUFR message is preceded by the two bulletins. The first bulletin has a length of 18 characters, and characters 8 to 13 indicate the combined length of second bulletin and the following BUFR message. The second bulletin has a length 23, representing the processing station identification, AWIPS sub-area identification number, processing day, hour and minute.
This poster will explain the software developed by the NOAA/NESDIS Office of Satellite Data Processing and Distribution (OSDPD), Information Processing Division (IPD) to encode and decode the ATOVS AWIPS BUFR sounding data products. The Bufr Encoder And Decoder was implemented under the Computer Sciences Corporation's (CSC) Central Satellite Data Processing contract to enhance the current ATOVS AWIPS system.
Poster Session 2, IIPS Poster Session II
Wednesday, 12 January 2005, 2:30 PM-4:00 PM
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