The National Weather Service (NWS) is developing the Radiosonde Replacement System (RRS) to replace its antiquated Micro-ART system, which has been in operation since the late 1980s. Currently there are two radiosonde vendors who will be producing 1680-MHz GPS radiosondes for the NWS. When the new RRS is fielded beginning in 2003, sites using the current variety of Radio-direction finding and LORAN-C radiosondes will be transitioned to the new GPS variety. However, this transition is made complicated by the fact that NWS cannot afford to purchase too many of the current variety as the transition to the new radiosondes is also occurring. This paper will describe the methodology used to optimize the use of the current radiosondes while the NWS upper air network transitions to the new ones.

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Weather Service.