I am happy to announce a significant improvement to the data quality availability through the windy radiosonde plugin, related to the backend service
in summary:
we have MUCH better coverage in high-resolution ascents since two days, as well as new stations appeared which had no coverage at all so far
this is thanks to a patch developed by windy's formidable Mr Karpíšek @FILIP_K which is running in the backend now - congratulations, Filip!
the gory detail:
radiosonde ascents are distributed in two formats, a telex-oriented legacy format called FM35, and a more recent high-resolution format called FM94 (or BUFR in meteospeak)
due to redundant data feeds, we receive both formats for many stations - if for a given station a high-res view is available, that is given preference - if we do not have something else, we fall back to the legacy format
I've been running this backend service for close to a year or so, and I always wondered why for some stations we have a strange form of coverage: sometimes we get hi-res data, but in many cases just legacy format. And there was no obvious pattern recognizable why this is so. My initial suspicion was that this was just an artefact of some data feeds which we have no control over, so have to live with it.
This manifested itself most visibly in Russian radiosonde ascents, but - as we later found out - has affected data from many other countries as well.
Following an in-depth exchange with helpful friends in Russia, it became clear we better search for errors in our software. I detected a smell in a central piece of code, and Filip came up with a key improvement in no time flat.
I very happy to have that mystery resolved.
You can probe yourself:
- Hohhot ZBHH (China, WMO id: 53463) - visible in hi-res since two days, no previous data
- same for Lhasa ZULS (WMO id: 55591), Ezeiza Aero SAEZ (WMO id: 87576), Neuquen Aero SAZN (WMO id: 87715)
- Bechar DAOR (Algeria, WMO id: 60571) - hi-res now, previously only legacy format
- all Russian stations are hi-res now AFAICT
- ascents distributed via NMC Denmark and Meteo France als improved in quality
I am pretty sure this service is now best-of-class as far as publically accessible sources of radiosonde ascents worldwide go!