Below are plots of radiosonde/SYNOP BUFR coverage for 6-10 November 2014 - reports as decoded at ECMWF, some reports not in standard BUFR are not decoded.
Please can data producers ensure that there is a reasonable overlap of TAC and BUFR data on the GTS (EUMETNET recommendation is six months), any attempt to rush the change will result in more errors, extra work for NWP centres and possibly worse forecasts. Note also that reformatted TEMP reports still as separate parts are not good BUFR and cause problems for NWP centres (some more than others).
Radiosonde coverage
About 55% of stations report in BUFR, but most (apart from the dark blue stations in the plot) report reformatted TEMP (see "structure" page). Reports may be incomplete (eg data above 100 hPa missing).
Compared to early October there are fewer stations reporting BUFR radiosonde data from China, Mexico and Japan. On 11 November ECMWF started assimilating a subset of the high resolution reports (about 16 stations from Europe plus some ASAP ships).
(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).
Surface coverage
Almost 70% of stations now report in BUFR, reports from Japan are missing relative to last month. Iceland has started reporting BUFR - from almost 100 stations, compared to about 20 in TAC.
Three countries (UK, Eire and Netherlands, shown green) ceased TAC SYNOP transmission on the GTS on 3rd or 4th November 2014 (see SYNOP ). ECMWF is now assimilating BUFR surface reports from these countries.
(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.)
