TITLE: GTS LDM Surface Hourly Observations [JOSS]


CONTACT:

Steve Williams
UCAR/JOSS
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder CO 80307-3000
email: sfw@ucar.edu
phone: 303-497-8987


1.0  General Description


The GTS Surface Hourly Observation Data is one of several surface
data sets collected by the University Corporation for Atmospheric
Research/Joint Office for Science Support (UCAR/JOSS).  Included 
in the data set are the global hourly (and special) surface 
observations.  These data are contained in daily files which are 
in GEMPAK format.  It may not contain data which was removed from
the US GTS feed.  The data were acquired via the UNIDATA Local 
Data Manager (LDM). 


2.0  Data and Format Information


2.1  GEMPAK Format


GEMPAK, the GEneral Meteorology PAcKage, is a suite of 
applications programs, libraries, graphic routines, and device 
drivers for the decoding, analysis, display and diagnosis of 
geo-referenced and meteorological data. GEMPAK provides a 
comprehensive set of meteorological parameter calculations for 
surface, upper-air, gridded, and remotely sensed data. 

GEMPAK was originally developed by the Severe Storms Laboratory 
at the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA starting in the early 
1980's. GEMPAK is currently being developed within the National
Weather Service (NWS) by the National Centers for Environmental
Prediction (NCEP). 

For information on GEMPAK see:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/gempak/index.html


3.0  Quality Control Procedures


     UCAR/JOSS conducted no quality checks on these data.


4.0  File Naming Convention


sayyyymmdd.gem

sa is the data type hourly sao
yyyy is the four digit year
mm is the two digit month
dd is the two digit day (UTC)


5.0  References


None.