This section gives examples and explanations for following types of synoptic observation:

• SYNOP - Surface Observation at Fixed Land Stations
• PILOT/TEMP - Upper-air Observations at Fixed Land Stations
• SHIP - Surface Observation by Ships
• BUOY - Buoy Observations
• AMDAR - AMDAR Data

Common explanations for Synoptic Data

recommendation by TT-ApMD-2

• metadata contact: role should be pointOfContact
• title: include a basic description of the dataset that is meaningful to non-specialists and following the TT-ApMD recommendation for title
• abstract: include a description in standard English meaningful to non-specialists and following the TT-ApMD guidelines for abstracts. Include the data type, centre creating reports, region, station names.
• data contact: role should be originator
• resourceMaintenance: TT-ApMD decided not to provide guidance
• resourceFormat: use, for example "FM 12 SYNOP" and "XII EXT" forms
• keywords for elements - place each element in a separate keyword
• specification of the time of reports - use keywords T00Z etc to allow datasets that include data for specific times to be identified
• place keywrods - use station identifiers, station name, station country (and use a thesaurus specified for this purpose to allow them to be identified)
• do NOT include the lat/long in the keywords - maintenance is too difficult
• distribution format - use FM 12 SYNOP as format, XII EXT as version
• distributor: role should be pointOfContact
• transfer options: current guidance to GISCs is that the GISC search detects data for global exchange and generate the URL for downloading from the cache - which means that this URL need not be in the metadata - thus we only need the URL of any non-GISC source of the data. However, the link to the cache of the copy of the data on the Principal GISC is useful if the data are found using GEOSS (for example).