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These values were decoded into 16 bit signed integers.  The missing value was converted to minimum possible value (-32768e1 Pa).  Unfortunately that was treated as valid value since geopotential was not missing.  Then that caused floating point exception in computation of power of (now negative!) pressure.  In the TAC (traditional alphanumeric) reports it was safely assumed geopotential is always missing when pressure is missing.  We are not monitoring later reports regarding this issue, as the NWP system was fixed immediately.  We also contacted the originating country, and they say it will be fixed.

Upper-air

Analysis of incoming data

Format/Headers/Stations as of 2015-01-13

description of algorithm to tell code form and parts

Use in NWP

• BUFR TEMP in U.S. was once used in assimilation from April 25 2013
• But it was stopped February 2014 (migration back to TAC)
• Starting the end of October 2014, the system uses BUFR if TAC is missing for the station/ship

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