WMO BUFR

Note: Much of the information presented below is from "UCAR:http://www.ofps.ucar.edu/gapp/model/bufr_list.html .

BUFR (Binary Universal Form for the Representation of Meteorological Data) was created by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988. BUFR is a binary format designed to represent, employing a continuous binary stream, meteorological point data (i.e. observations at discrete points, as opposed to gridded data). There is, however, nothing uniquely meteorological about BUFR. The meteorological emphasis is the origin of the code, which is the result of a series of informal and formal "expert meetings" and periods of experimental usage by several meteorological data processing centers. The format may be applied to any numerical or qualitative data type.

BUFR files are stream-based and consist of a number of consecutive records. The format documentation describes BUFR records as self-descriptive. A BUFR record containing observational data of any sort also contains a complete description of what those data are: the description includes identifying the parameter in question, (height, temperature, pressure, latitude, date and time, whatever), the units, any decimal scaling that may have been employed to change the precision from that of the original units, data compression that may have been applied for efficiency, and the number of binary bits used to contain the numeric value of the observation. This data description is all contained in tables which are the major part of the BUFR documentation. Tables defined in BUFR include:

• BUFR Table A - Data Category
• BUFR Table B - The classification and definition of data elements
• BUFR Table C - Data Description Operators
• BUFR Table D - The list of common sequences
• BUFR Code and Flag Tables - Definition of code and flag tables associated with BUFR Table B
• Common Code Tables to Binary and Alphanumeric Codes

Detailed information about BUFR