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Met Office - metDB Data: AMDARS data


Brief desciption

WMO code FM 42-IX (Aircraft Meteorological DAta Relay). Reports from selected aircraft carrying ASDAR or ACARS automatic data-collection systems. (The AMDAR code replaced the ASDAR code in March 1992.) Some of the reports are received in BUFR and others in character code.

Observation frequency

Hourly observations from aircraft during all stages of flight giving globally coverage in around 160,000 reports a day.

Delivery and ingest schedule

Data are extracted for the 4 principal synoptic periods (00-06, 06-12, 12-18 and 18-00 UT) and delivered to the BADC at the following times (all in GMT):

Synoptic period Delivery to BADC
0000-0559 1330
0600-1159 1930
1200-1759 0130
1800-2359 0730

Ingest scripts run at the BADC every 20 minutes, converting the incoming files to the self describing BADC-CSV format, but neither the processed or raw data are placed into archive until the following day.

Known problems

Additional information

Parameter list

The table below provides the list of available parameters in the column order that they appear in the BADC-CSV files in the archive.

Column numberParameterUnit
1YEARyear
2MONTHmonth
3DAYday
4HOURhour
5MINUTEminute
6Secondsecond
7TIME OF RECEIPT YEARyear
8TIME OF RECEIPT MONTHmonth
9TIME OF RECEIPT DAYday
10TIME OF RECEIPT HOURhour
11TIME OF RECEIPT MINUTEminute
12Aircraft registration number1
13Aircraft identifier1
14LATITUDEdegrees
15LONGITUDEdegrees
16Altitudem
17Original specification of lat/long1
18Collecting centre1
19Aircraft navigational system1
20 Type of aircraft data relay system1
21Aircraft roll angledegrees
22PressurePa
23Phase of flight1
24Wind measurement instrument type1
25Wind directiondegrees
26Wind speedms-1
27Vertical gust velocityms-1
28Vertical gust accelerationms-2
29Degree of turbulence 
30Precision of temperature observationK
31Air temperatureK
32Dew point temperatureK
33Relative humidity %
34Mixing ratio (from 18/06/07)kg/kg
35Degree of air frame icing1