Thanks Martin, I'll have a full read of that later and I don't disagree
about things must move on.
What I did look for straight away was the ';schedule' and from what I
can see the completion of this migration programme is November 2010
(Page 30)
I now understand a bit more the differnce between BUFR and CREX, the
first being the binary code the second the decoding method.
Do we know whether this NEW coding is going to be available publicly,
or a least a watered down "Res 40" version?
Which leads me onto my greatest fear, I'm going to need a degree in
computer programming to have the slightest chance of keeping up with
the times and on a scale of 1 to 100 I'm probably on 0.5 ! I just wish
I could break through this barrier of understanding :-(

Keith (Southend)
http://www.southendweather.net

Martin Rowley wrote:
"Keith (Southend)" wrote in message
news:dt0d0m$50$1

I wonder sometimes how much longer any of this data will be available
for, especially with changes to the whole way of reporting coming in
at some date in the future.
...
[long, but eventually on-topic]

In the 1950's, after my family moved up here to Berkshire (from
Cornwall), once a week my Dad & I would walk up the end of the lane and
use the call-box outside the small sub-post office to call my Grandma
who lived in Salcombe, South Devon. The procedure was that you lifted
the receiver, waited for the local operator to answer, then asked for
'Trunks'; when the trunk operator answered, you asked for the number
your required, she would tell you to wait and have 1 shilling and
fourpence (or whatever) ready, then at the appropriate time, you would
have to insert the money into the slots in the telephone base unit; once
satisfied the correct money was in play, the call would be connected: if
you got the 'go ahead caller', then you pressed button 'A'; if the call
was not answered and you wished to abandon the call, you pressed button
'B' and got your money back.

Nowadays, you use the mobile. . . . . .

The point of that little excursion into history is that SYNOP's,
METAR's, TAF's, etc. etc., belong to an age of 50-baud teleprinter
broadcasts (and earlier W/T morse telegraphy). We don't have
teleprinters clattering away in offices churning out reams of paper with
coloured lines down the side - it all comes up on a screen in the blink
of an eye. Many here have their own weather stations, and these can be
interrogated by anyone on the 'net; data transfer (and compression)
techniques are so far advanced now that there is no need to encode the
data for humans to re-interpret: a near-continuous stream of data
relating to temperature, pressure, humidity, cloud structure, visibility
etc., can (and is) passed to weather analysis centres at frightening
speed where it is ingested directly into the models. Many meteorological
services (including the UK) are planning systems whereby data sensors
are polled centrally for the various atmospheric variables and the data
ingested in real-time directly into models, workstations etc.

I could go on, but you get the drift; don't get too hung up on the SYNOP
code - wonderful though it is, it won't last for ever - plans are well
advanced for the migration from the traditional alphanumeric codes (TAC)
to binary formats for the transfer of meteorological data - see ...

http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/WMOCodes/M...rationPlan.doc

Martin.