NCEP ADP Global Upper Air and Surface (PREPBUFR and NetCDF formats) Weather Observations are composed of a global set of surface and upper air reports operationally collected by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). These include land surface, marine surface, radiosonde, pibal and aircraft reports from the Global Telecommunications System (GTS), profiler and US radar derived winds, SSM/I oceanic winds and TCW retrievals, and satellite wind data from the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS). The reports can include pressure, geopotential height, temperature, dewpoint temperature, wind direction and speed. Report time intervals range from hourly to 12 hourly. These data are the primary input to the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS), which is used to create the NCEP Final Analyses (FNL).

The NetCDF datafiles are converted from PREPBUFR format using the Model Evaluation Tools (MET) software package.

More information is available.