FSU/CUDOS North American Comprehensive Rawinsonde Observations

This page has been established to aid those who utilize upper air observations taken from radiosondes or rawinsondes. Real-time access to today's and also archived raw upper air reports is provided, including tabulations of coded and decoded observations, and vertical and horizontal plots. You'll also find links to sites which archive upper-air data. No analyses are created here...those are available on numerous other WWW servers.

You can check the latest NCEP summary of RAOBs here - link now fixed
[Hint: you can search for "RAOB" in your browser to get the correct message!]

Upper Air Reports

The latest map of available upper air reports (those rawinsonde flights which have reached at least 400 hPa) for various regions are found here:

Choose your Geographic Region

  • Continental US (CONUS)
  • Caribbean
  • Alaska
  • Canada
  • North America by station ID
  • North America by WMO #
  • Pacific Ocean by station ID
  • Pacific Ocean by WMO #
  • Displays of off-time sounding reports
  • Maps for areas other than North America

    Latest mandatory level plots (standard pressure levels [mb or hPa] -- isobaric charts):

    Choose from the following mandatory levels

  • Lower Troposphere: 1000...925...850
  • Middle Troposphere: 700...500...400
  • Upper Troposphere: 300...250...200
  • Stratosphere: 150...100...70...50...30...10

  • A description of isobaric charts is found here.

    Latest fixed wind level plots (standard height levels [ft MSL] -- isohypsic charts):

    Choose from the following common fixed wind levels (in feet above mean sea level, generally)

  • Lower Troposphere: Surface...1,000...2,000...3,000...4,000...6,000...7,000...8,000
  • Middle Troposphere: 9,000...12,000...14,000...16,000...20,000
  • Upper Troposphere: 25,000...30,000...35,000...37,000...39,000
  • Stratosphere: 50,000...53,000...70,000...90,000...110,000

  • A description of and rationale for fixed wind level (isohypsic) plots is found here.

    Latest typical "theta" plots (constant potential temperature levels [K] -- isentropic charts):

    Choose your level (in 5 K increments)
    275...280...285...290...295...300...305...310...315

    320...325...330...335...340...345...350...355

  • A description of isentropic plots is found here.

    Sounding Plots

    Soundings are vertical profile plots of meteorological variables taken from rawinsonde observations, usually the temperature, dew point temperature, and wind as a function of pressure. All upper air stations in North America and its environs are available here.

    Skew-T log-p diagrams

    Stüve (or pseudo-adiabatic) diagrams are also available.

    A key for the skew-T log-p diagrams is being prepared.

    The archive of images available may be found here (at approximately 0220 and 1420 UTC for 00 and 12 UTC upper air charts, respectively).

    Hodographs

    Hodographs are now available. These are plots of the upper air wind field as a function of height at each station.

    Sounding Lists

    Sounding Tabulation Links

    An explanation of the lists is found here.

    Access to selectable upper air coded and decoded lists by station and date/time.

    Raw Data Files

    All US Upper Air Data    All Rawinsonde Data    Searchable Rawinsonde Data Files (by date/time) - Coming Soon!

    Station Identification Aids

    Unidata Searchable Station List

    Station ID list used for CUDOS sounding generation

    NWS Searchable Station List

    Other Upper Air Sites (Real-time)

  • NCAR Real-Time Weather
  • COVIS Upper Air Visualizer

    Archived Upper Air Data Links

    Arctic upper air data, courtesy Jon Kahl, UWM

    RAOB Server, NOAA/FSL

    Comprehensive Aerological Reference Data Set (CARDS), NOAA/NCDC

    The CODIAC System, UCAR/NOAA Joint Office for Science Support

    ISWS 50-Year Radiosonde Archive, Illinois State Water Survey

    SHADOZ, courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

    Most of these real-time weather maps are generated using the GEMPAK software package; they do not necessarily "scale" well because they contain a lot of text in a hardware-generated font, so please try to view them at their "normal" size. Data are provided from National Weather Service Family of Services feeds to FSU in real time via the Internet Data Distribution (IDD) program by Alden Electronics, Inc. under arrangement with the Unidata program. There is even a disclaimer!

    There are also links to hourly Surface Weather Plots

    back to the main CUDOS page.
    back to the Florida EXPLORES! home page.
    back to the FSU Meteorology home page.

    last modified 09 Febr 2001 p. ruscher