PACS Surface: Buoy 32302 Meteorological Data 

1.  General Description

    This data set contains data from buoy 32302 located at 18.0 S Latitude and 
85.1 W Longitude covering the period 02 February 1986 through 03 April 1995.
The Joint Office of Science Support (JOSS) obtained this data from the 
National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) web site at www.ndbc.noaa.gov.  JOSS 
conducted no quality control on this data.

2. Data Contact

Jose Meitin (meitin@ucar.edu)

3.  Format Description

    An example line from a data file looks like this :

YY MM DD hh WD   WSPD GST  WVHT  DPD   APD  MWD  BAR    ATMP  WTMP  DEWP  VIS
92 07 20 00 126 09.2 11.0 03.00 09.10 06.80 999 1016.6  18.9  19.6 999.0 99.0

Where 92     is the year (92 = 1992)
      07     is the month (7 = July)
      20     is the day
      00     is the nominal hour (UTC)
      126    is the wind direction (Deg)
      09.2   is the wind speed (m/s)
      11.0   is the peak wind gust (m/s)
      03.00  is the significant wave height (m)
      06.80  is the average wave period (s)
      09.10  is the dominat wave period (s)
      999    is the mean wave direction (Deg)
      1016.6 is the sea level pressure (mb)
      18.9   is the air temperature (Deg C)
      19.6   is sea surface temperature (Deg C)
      999.0  is the dew point temperature (Deg C)
      99.0   is Station visibility in statute miles
 
 
Data are classified according to the following groups.  Any data field that 
contains "9 filled" represents missing data for that observation hour.  
(Example: 999.0  99.0)

A. Standard meteorological data.

   ATMP           Air temperature (Celsius).  For sensor heights
                  on buoys, see Hull Descriptions.  For sensor
                  heights at C-MAN stations, see C-MAN Sensor Locations

   WTMP           Sea surface temperature (Celsius).  For sensor
                  depth, see Hull Description.

   DEWP           Dewpoint temperature taken at the same height
                  as the air temperature measurement.

   BAR            Sea level pressure (hPa).  For C-MAN sites and
                  Great Lakes buoys, the recorded pressure is
                  reduced to sea level using the method described
                  in NWS Technical Procedures Bulletin 291
                  (11/14/80).

   WSPD           Wind speed (m/s) averaged over an eight-minute
                  period for buoys and a two-minute period for land stations.
                  Reported Hourly.  See Wind Averaging Methods.

   WDIR           Wind direction (the direction the wind is coming from in 
		  degrees
                  clockwise from N) during the same period used for WSPD.
                  See Wind Averaging Methods

   GST            Peak 5 or 8 second gust speed (m/s) measured
                  during the eight-minute or two-minute period.
                  The 5 or 8 second period can be determined by
                  payload, See the Sensor Reporting, Sampling, and Accuracy 
		  section.

   WVHT           Significant wave height (meters) is calculated as
                  the average of the highest one-third of all of the wave
                  heights during the 20-minute sampling period.
                  See the Wave Measurements section.

   APD            Average wave period (seconds) of all waves during
                  the 20-minute period. See the Wave Measurements
                  section.

   DPD            Dominant wave period (seconds) is the period
                  with the maximum wave energy. See the Wave Measurements
                  section.

   MWD            Mean wave direction (degrees) corresponding to energy of
                  the dominant period (DOMPD).  See the Wave Measurements
                  section.

   VIS            Station visibility (statute miles)

   PTDY           Pressure Tendency is the direction (plus or minus) and
                  the amount of pressure change (hPa)for a three hour period
                  ending at the time of observation.

   TIDE           The periodic rising and falling of the earth's oceans.
                  Tide is measured in feet.