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Below are plots of SYNOP/radiosonde BUFR coverage for 1 20 - 7 June 26 July 2015 - reports as decoded at ECMWF, some reports not in standard BUFR are not decoded.
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About 70% of stations now report in BUFR. Iceland is now reporting BUFR from almost 100 stations, compared to about 20 in TAC, there are also extra stations from Brazil. For some countries (eg Japan) stations/reports designated for national use only are received in TAC but not in BUFR. For part of March and April BUFR reports from USA, Thailand and some western Pacific islands were missing; for much part of the week shown (120-7 June26 July) Russian BUFR reports from the Philipinnes were missing. In recent months 2015 BUFR reports from some Canadian stations have appeared and Tanzanian stations have started reporting BUFR six-hourly. There were other fluctuations about two months ago, partly because some countries started using new BUFR tables that ECMWF could not introduce immediately.
Countries that have ceased TAC SYNOP transmission on the GTS are shown green and labelled 'Post SYNOP' (see SYNOP ). ECMWF is assimilating BUFR surface reports from these countries plus some others.
(Grey: TAC reports but no BUFR, Purple: BUFR reports but no TAC, Red *: position error. Light/dark blue indicates that there are less/more than 60% of the reports available in BUFR. Many of the light blue stations report 3-hourly in SYNOP but only 6-hourly in BUFR.)
Radiosonde coverage
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(Grey: TAC reports but no BUFR, Purple: BUFR reports but no TAC, Red *: position error. Light/dark blue indicates low/high vertical resolution BUFR data. Black ring - ship report, or identifier error!.)
It can be difficult to distinguish native BUFR from reformatted TEMP. The plot below (showing data received at the Met Office) shows stations reporting radiosonde drift with a red halo, there are a few extra island stations reporting native BUFR compared to early March and some Australian stations started sending native BUFR in July.
The maximum number of levels reported gives some information on the resolution of the reports (1-29 grey; 30-99 light blue; 100-299 dark blue; 300-999 green; 1000-2999 orange; over 3000 cyan.)
