1 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA NCDC Report to US Port Meteorological Officers August 2014 Eric Freeman 1,2, Scott Woodruff 1,3, Sandra Lubker 4 1) NOAA National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, USA 2) STG. Inc., Asheville, USA 3) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, USA 4) NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory, Boulder, USA

2 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Outline NCDC/US VOS/PMO Interactions SEAS 2000 Archive Issues Importance of US VOS Internationally – Real Time Reports – Delayed Mode Reports – ICOADS

3 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA NCDC and US VOS NCDC collects/archives reports from: – SEAS/TurboWin delayed mode reports – Real time GTS transmissions NCDC is Contributing Member (CM) and Responsible Member (RM) for US VOS delayed mode (DM) reports – Global, quarterly data exchanges with WMO Global Collecting Centres (GCC) Responsible for providing US VOS reports to GCCs for inclusion in full global file

4 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA NCDC and US VOS Collaborations with AOML/US VOS on SEAS 9 data validation (IMMT-5 format) and updates Collaborations on procedures for collecting delayed reports and submissions to NCDC – IMMT procedure document (Lead: Chris Fakes, Houston) Daily reports for PMOs regarding US VOS observations collected in NCDC GTS stream (see next slide)

5 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA PMO Reports - Updated Daily By Port wnload/pmorpts/pmorpt.txt By ship name nload/pmorpts/pmorpta.txt

6 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA SEAS 2000 Archive Issues Differences discovered in GTS transmissions and SEAS 2000 delayed mode reports Full scope of problem unknown – Appear to be non-systematic Doubtful if simple global fix can easily ‘correct’ erroneous data – Assume GTS reports are correct (via comparisons with NCEP/other GTS collections) – Being removed from ICOADS for Release 3.0 R3.0 currently under development Release expected late next year

7 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA SEAS 2000 Issues - Examples Example WTEB /222 // 0////2////3////4////5////6////80063////////// BBXX WTEB / //// 2//// 3//// 4//// 5//// 6//// ICE ///// NCDC GTS Observation: DS (1) and VS (1) both present in GTS transmission, but not SEAS data Example WTEJ ////80240////////// BBXX WTEJ / //// ICE ///// NCDC GTS has wind direction reported as calm '00', but reported as variable '99' in SEAS Example WGXO ////80033////////// BBXX WGXO / //// ICE ///// NCDC GTS observation has sign of wet bulb as '1' (negative measured), but reported as ‘0’ (positive measured) in SEAS Additional issues with other variables, e.g. dwpt, sst

8 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Importance of US VOS Reports – Real Time (RT) GTS Receipts 90% of VOS GTS observations in 2012 are from six national VOS fleets (SOT-VII) US VOS is #1 of six major contributors (for Apr 2014) Important source for global coverage/marine climate products Valuable for satellite cal/val and co-located buoy data quality comparisons High density in N. Pacific and N. Atlantic Unique reports in Southern Ocean and near Alaska

9 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Importance of US VOS Reports – Delayed Mode (DM) from E-Logbooks Provides verification of GTS transmissions Provides US data for quarterly international exchanges with WMO Global Collecting Centers (GCC) – Major declines in recent years due to: NOAA Paperless Initiative (coincidental with Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) at NCDC no longer in existence to digitize B-81 forms) SEAS 2000 data problems Delays in SEAS 9.1 installation on ships Transition to TurboWin (5.0 and Plus[+] versions)

10 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Importance of US VOS Reports – Delayed Mode (DM) from E-Logbooks Provides additional elements not available in FM-13 SHIP Code from Voluntary Observing Ship Climate Fleet (VOSClim) ships – Ship’s speed over ground at time of observation – Ship’s heading at time of observation – Height of deck cargo above summer maximum load line – Departure of summer maximum load line from actual sea level – Uncorrected (i.e. relative) wind speed and direction

11 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Platform Mixture in ICOADS – Observing System Monitoring Ship reports on increase after decline – Mostly due to widespread use of AWS systems – Currently, only half the number of VOS ships reporting compared to a decade ago

12 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Elements observed from ICOADS – Observing System Monitoring Losing traditional visual obs. (e.g. clouds, sea state) due to decline in VOS and expanded use of AWS systems – drifting buoys and other automated platform types fill in gaps globally, but primarily SST and SLP

13 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Recommendations Transition US VOS fleet to TurboWin (5.0 or Plus[+]) – Internationally coordinated software development – Robust and widely used – TurboWin+ is AMVER capable Continue to promote ships to VOSClim class for improved, climate quality observations Stay engaged with international activities – JCOMM’s Ship Observation Team (SOT) Improve/expand long term climate datasets, i.e. ICOADS, through RT and DM reporting

14 NOAA’S NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER – ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Thank You! Questions? Contact: