Discussion forum (En)

Hello,

Upper-air observations are treated differently from surface observation in the WDQMS web tool. The availability maps reflect the fact that TEMP reports are supposed to include temperature, wind and humidity measurements carried out during the radiosonde ascent. Note also the differences in how information is aggregated for the period of interest. Regarding the 6-hourly periods, the reporting performances focus on the existence and completeness of the radiosonde report, i.e., if in the report all the three variables - temperature, wind and humidity - are available above 100 hPa (information of both layers, Trop and Stra). This is described by the following categories: not reporting during the period (black); incomplete launch due to missing variable(s) and incomplete launch due to missing layer(s) (orange and red, respectively); complete launch (green). In the daily option, the reporting performances are divided into the following categories: not reporting during the period (black); reporting with some completeness issues (orange), meaning variable(s) and/or layer missing; reporting but with some availability issues, meaning totals below expected (red); fully reporting, no issues (green). The metadata issues flagged are the following: station ID not known to OSCAR/Surface (yellow); station reporting more than expected (pink).

"regarding quality, if upper air data from one station indicate red dot, it means one layer missing, how to improve that report? " 

A red dot on the quality maps does not mean that one layer is missing (this is only true for availability maps). In quality maps a red dot means that the calculated statistics (e.g. rmse) for the selected variable and period is above a certain threshold, which is indicated in the map legend. 

Please see the WDQMS web tool User Guide available under "Support" for a more detailed description of the system (

Thanks,

Cristina Prates