The transition from Traditional Alphanumeric Codes (TACs; TEMP, SYNOP etc) to BUFR (Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data) has been going on for at least a decade. The WMO codes page and its links have a lot of information about the codes and the migration (not always up-to-date, and the "migration complete" label for November 2010 in the migration matrix was an aspiration rather than accomplished fact; there is also a new WMO Codes Registry which is still being populated). BUFR is a Table-Driven Code Form (TDCF; the other main WMO one being CREX). Such a migration involves many people in many countries and once the reports have been prepared and transmitted via the GTS (Global Telecommunication System) then the task of processing them and using them in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) can begin. These Wiki pages are intended to help with this task by sharing information between different centres. One important aspect is data validation, or identifying bugs and features of the BUFR reports and where necessary providing feedback to the data producers and getting errors resolved.
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