Changes to radiosonde reports and their processing for numerical weather prediction

In the biggest change to radiosonde reporting for many years binary BUFR reports are replacing alphanumeric TEMP code. The binary reports can provide much higher vertical resolution and the time and position of each level, but changes to observation processing at forecast centres are needed to use the new reports and in particular the level dependent positions. Using data vertically averaged over model layers, observation minus background (O − B) statistics from both formats compare closely (with a temperature offset of about 0.1°C due to rounding in the older format). Correct treatment of balloon drift improves the O − B statistics at upper‐levels.