The observation types affected are SYNOP,SHIP, TEMP, TEMP SHIP, PILOT LAND, PILOT SHIP and AMDAR.
Most of the data are still under monitoring and will be actively assimilated only if the equivalent TAC data are missing or if they are deemed to improve the forecast scores.
At the moment ECMWF is actively assimilating the following data received in BUFR
- surface observations from United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and Nederlands, due to the announcement of switch off of TAC.
- upper air observations from Germany, because they are high resolution profiles.
- E-ASAP observations which are being terminated in TAC format
- E-AMDAR data for which a switch off of the TAC format has been announced.
For high-resolution radiosonde data in BUFR, about twice as many data points in the vertical are now used. Unfortunately not many high-resolution radiosonde data are available on GTS at the moment. Most of the upper air observations are exchanged on GTS as reformatted TEMP in separate parts A, B, C, D. This practise is not included in the B/C125 Regulations and those observations should be replaced by native BUFR high resolution data as soon as possible to allow the improvement of the observing system which is expected with the introduction of the BUFR format.