...
Below are plots of SYNOP/BUOY/radiosonde BUFR coverage for September December 2016 - reports as decoded at ECMWF, some reports not in standard BUFR are not decoded.
...
About 80% of stations now report in BUFR, however the BUFR coverage is marginally worse than in February 2016 due to fewer reports from Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Pakistanapproximately constant over the last year. (Iceland is reporting BUFR from almost 100 stations, compared to about 20 in TAC. ECMWF is not currently decoding BUFR data from Austria since a template change, a decoder change that fixes this is expected soon.) For some countries stations/reports designated for national use only are received in TAC but not in BUFR. Light blue markers indicate that fewer BUFR reports are received than SYNOP reports - in most cases the BUFR is six-hourly but the SYNOPs are three-hourly.
...
(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.)
BUOY coverage
On 6 June 2016 ECMWF started passively monitoring BUFR BUOY data in its operational system, assimilation of pressure data started in July, many alphanumeric (FM18) reports ceased on 2 November 2016. For drifting buoys the BUFR feed is almost complete now helped by the fact that fewer data producers are involved (there are 23 about 20 Indian and a few Japanese drifting buoys not using the approved template as yet). There are In mid-2016 there were 51 pressure-reporting buoys reporting in BUFR but not in FM18, some of these are were moored buoys including 7 PIRATA or RAMA buoys which also report subsurface temperature and salinity (the subsurface BUFR data are not yet processed by ECMWF). Template 315008 is used for moored buoys and 315009 for drifting buoys. More details of the marine data can be found in the E-SURFMAR pages (one issue is the move from 5-digit to 7-digit identifiers, this means that some newer buoys cannot really be coded using FM18). The plot below compares FM18 data with reports available in templates 315008 (moored buoys) and 315009 (drifting buoys). It does not include the moored buoys that currently report in TM13 (SHIP) code - at some point these will start using the 315008 template. Note that almost about half the buoys, shown in light blue, do not report pressure (especially those in the tropical Pacific and the Mediterranean, they are deployed to measure SST and currents).
(Grey: TAC reports but no BUFR, Purple: BUFR reports but no TAC. Both TAC and BUFR: light Dark blue - fewer BUFR reports including pressure, dark Light blue - similar numbers, green - more BUFRBUFR reports without pressure. Circles/triangles - drifting/moored buoys.)
Radiosonde coverage
Almost 70% of stations report in BUFR, about 20% 25% report native BUFR with roughly 50% 45% reporting reformatted TEMP (see "structure" page and plots below). The proportion of native reports is gradually growing (with improvements from the UK, Korea and Poland during 2016). Reports may be incomplete (eg data above 100 hPa missing). The UK is now sending high resolution BUFR from some stations in the standard template (it was using an alternate template before). In November 2014 some of the ASAP ships stopped reporting in TEMP SHIP format, they Reports from the ASAP ships are now only available in BUFR format. In early 2016 Spain stopped sending TEMP reports to some GTS nodes, but they are still received at ECMWF. A smattering of other stations (green dots on the map, these include 17607, Cyprus; 33008; Belarus; 47115, Korea) are BUFR only, one or two of these are new to the GTS and never reported in TEMP code.
(Grey: TAC reports but no BUFR, Purple: BUFR reports but no TAC, Red *: position error. Blue: both BUFR and TAC, light blue indicates fewer ascents in BUFR. Triangle - ship report, X - wind-only report.)
The plot below distinguishes native BUFR (stations reporting valid radiosonde drift positions): high/low resolution (dark/light blue, using 300 level threshold) from reformatted TEMP (orange). High resolution reports come mainly from European and Australian stations.
