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From: davis@groucho.ucar.edu (Glenn P. Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Network Temperature Protocol
Message-ID: <8078@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 90 23:22:21 GMT
References: <9007240048.AA00668@bel.isi.edu>
Sender: news@ncar.ucar.edu
Organization: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Lines: 62

In <9007240048.AA00668@bel.isi.edu> postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU writes:



>Network Working Group                                          J. Postel
>Request for Comments: XXXX                                           ISI
>                                                               July 1990

>                     Temperature Quote Protocol

>Status of this Memo

>This RFC suggests an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.
>Hosts on the Internet that choose to implement a Temperature Quote
>Protocol are encouraged to experiment with this protocol.

 ...and so on

You probably don't want to hear this, but there are a number of
protocols and formats for weather info defined by the
"World Meterological Organization" (WMO).


See, for example, WMO publication number 386, "Manual on the Global
Telecommunication System, Volume 1, Global Aspects, Part II" for the
protocols.

Of more relevance to this discussion is the specification of a
synoptic report (a weather report from a ground station).
This is contained in the WMO "Manual on Codes", publication No. 306.
The synoptic codes are code form "FM 12-VIII Ext." .

Here is an example:

^A^M^M
727 ^M^M
SMBZ4 SBBR 241200^M^M
AAXX 24124 ^M^M
83827 21225 80000 10110 20101 39900 40190 53012 7104/ 886// 333 ^M^M
20082 69974=^M^M^M
^M^M
^C

This is a report from "SBBR" (Brazilia) at 12:00 UTC on July 24.
"Control" characters are indicated using "^X", etc.
The actual report begins at line AAXX ...

I can't decode it, but somewhere we have some software that can :-).
Things like temperature, wind speed and direction, rel humidity, 
barometric pressure, cloud cover, etc are all in that line.

They devised these things in the days of 300 baud teletypes == expensive
bandwidth.

Cheers.

Glenn P. Davis
UCAR / Unidata
PO Box 3000                   1685 38th St.
Boulder, CO 80307-3000        Boulder, CO  80301

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