Third International Workshop for Port Meteorological Officers
Hamburg, Germany, 23-24 March 2006

Coding issues

BUFR, how it affects the PMO (Frits Koek)
BUFR and IMMT (Etienne Charpentier)

Workshop's recommendations:

1)      Frits Koek and Sarah North undertook to review the required data and metadata elements that would be required in a VOS (including VOSClim) BUFR template. The resultant list would then be submitted to a new informal ad hoc SOT task team on VOS migration to BUFR (Frits Koek, Sarah North, Pierre Blouch, Graeme Ball, Julie Fletcher, Etienne Charpentier) by 1 June 2006. Comments submitted by the team by 1 July 2006.

2)      WMO will liaise with CBS ET/DRC and ET/MTDCF and advise that the SOT is working on revisiting the list of elements for inclusion in the VOS BUFR template for ship data and is seeking ET/DRC help.

3)      The SOT and ET/DRC will liaise to develop a draft BUFR template suitable for VOS and VOSClim which will be submitted for endorsement by SOT-IV. 

The meeting considered possible implementation scenarios as follows:

 (i)                  Phase 1, target 2007: Member Countries to work on software that converts SHIP to BUFR (1 to 1 conversion) and implement it on a case by case basis.

(ii)                Phase 2, target 2006 to SOT-IV: analyse requirements and consider possible solutions (e.g. (proprietary format + metadata) to BUFR, or (“SOT” format + metadata) to BUFR. “SOT” format is a format inspired on FM-13 SHIP format and should be regarded as proprietary; it is not intended for direct GTS distribution but as a practical way of using existing software slightly modified to achieve BUFR distribution of the data on the GTS.

(iii)               Phase 3, target 2008: Implementation of proposed recommendations.

(iv)              Phase 4, target 2012: Operational system in place.