Creating your own Bufr Stations in the WS Eta

Yes, the word on the street was correct, you can now generate your own BUFR soundings with the WS Eta 3.1. It's pretty easy too. In eta_convert.csh you will find a few configuration parameters used to extract the soundings of your choice and write them to a BUFR file. This BUFR file can then be processed for viewing in BUFKIT, NSHARP, or whatever display package you have laying around the kitchen. That's correct, what ever stations YOU desire. No more of the NCEP man keeping you down.

To specify a sounding station for your BUFR file, you will need to add an entry to the $WS_ETA/const/wseta_bufrstns.parm file. The format of this entry is the same as that for the stations in the $WS_ETA/const/bufr_stations.parm file. For example:

000817

32.54N

85.79W

MAX

10

E BAMA,

AL

157

WSR88D

3-93

You can use the entries in $WS_ETA/const/bufr_stations.parm file for your own stations, or be the unique individual your mother always said that you were. If you choose to be a rebel and create your own stations, the only thing you need to be concerned with are the first 3 entries in red above. The rest of the information needs to be in your $WS_ETA/const/wseta_bufrstns.parm file, but anything will do since the green entries above are not used. What needs to be unique besides yourself are the lat/lon pair and station number. You may assign any station number to any lat/lon pair provided that the number in the file is unique. In other words you can't have multiple 000001's, 999999's, or 724560's in the file even if the lat/lon's are different.

After creating your bufr station table you are free to run the eta_convert.csh script to generate your bufr files.