The WDQMS operational web tool monitors the performance of some of the WIGOS observing components, namely the GOS land-based surface and upper-air (radiosonde) stations and marine surface platforms,, the GBON surface and upper-air land-based stations, and the GCOS surface and upper-air land stations. The monitoring of the GOS networks covered in the near-real-time NWP monitoring module is based on NWP monitoring information provided by some global NWP centres. The GBON monitoring is also based on the near-real-time monitoring information provided by the four global NWP centres. The GCOS monitoring module is based on data collected from the GCOS monitoring centres and includes the monitoring of the climate observing networks GSN and GUAN.
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All the four WIGOS Monitoring Centres - ECMWF, DWD, JMA and NCEP- are providing quality monitoring reports for upper-air observations. Like the surface reports, these include qualitative as well as quantitative information. The quantitative information provided is obtained by aggregating the O-B departures into two main categories: layer between the first pressure level up to 100 hPa inclusive (Trop); and the layer from 100 hPa up to the last reported level (Stra). The quantitative information for the aforementioned layers consists of both the mean and standard deviation of O-B departures over the layer for the following observed physical quantities: upper-air temperature, upper-air humidity and upper-air wind. Provision of these data reports (four daily, centred at the main synoptic hours, 00, 06, 12 and 18UTC), typically happens 24 hours after the actual observation. The availability, quality and completeness of these conventional profiling observations can be easily assessed based on the information provided by the monitoring reports. It is worth mentioning that for the high-resolution BUFR reports, two messages are disseminated on the Global Telecommunication System (GTS): a preliminary message containing the measurements from the surface up to 100h Pa (TTAA=IUK header - I, Observational data Binary coded, U, upper-air message and K, radiosonde from fixed land station up to 100 hPa) and the final message containing the entire sounding from surface to balloon burst (TTAA=IUS, header - I, Observational data Binary coded, U, upper-air message and S, radiosonde from fixed land station up to balloon burst). ECMWF, JMA and DWD use the full BUFR message (i.e., IUS bulletin), and only if the full one is not available they use the IUK bulletin. Therefore, all NWP monitoring reports reflect this, i.e., the ascent report that contains the highest level will be used to calculate the statistics (i.e., IUS bulletin). This is a case of duplicates, however, if a radiosonde is launched 30 mins after the one that went wrong (i.e., burst at quite low altitudes), both will be used because they are not considered duplicates in those circumstances.
2.1.1.Surface-marine observations
This module displays surface marine stations that are identified by the NWP Centres as ship, moored and drifting buoys.
ECMWF and DWD, are providing quality monitoring reports of surface marine observations based on feedback from their data assimilation (DA) systems on a daily basis. These reports include qualitative and quantitative (Observation-minus-Background, O-B, departures) information covering the following observed physical quantities when they are available in the reports: surface pressure, 2-metre temperature, 2-metre relative humidity and 10-metre wind (meridional and zonal components). The qualitative information includes a description on the usage (Status, i.e., used or not used on the assimilation) and the type of report (i.e., SHIP, Moored or Drifting BUOY in either Traditional Alphanumeric Code -TAC-, or in the Binary Universal Format for the Representation of Meteorological Data -BUFR format) of each of the above-mentioned physical quantities.
2.2.GBON monitoring
The GBON module monitors the compliance of all land-based surface and upper-air GBON-affiliated stations – as documented in OSCAR/Surface - with the GBON baseline requirements. Data availability at station level is calculated using the near-real-time monitoring data provided by the four NWP centres and stored in the WDQMS database at ECMWF.
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