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For more than 30 years, drifting buoys had been sending their observations ashore thanks to the Argos system, exclusively. Argos data are processed by CLS in Toulouse (France) and in Largo (USA). For many years, data had been sent onto the GTS in FM18 BUOY and FM94 BUFR (never-validated WMO template), in parallel. Since 2008, Iridium Short Burst Data (SBD) has been more and more used for the transmission of drifting buoy data ashore. Today, data from nearly all platforms transmit are transmitted in the expected BUFR template 315009. The transmission of the never-validated BUFR WMO template has ended.
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