These are raw radiosonde and pilot balloon observations taken from various locations at various times around the globe transmitted through the National Weather Service Telecommunications Gateway (NWSTG) in a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR) format beginning in May 2017. Variables include Temperature, humidity, Wind direction and speed, pressure, height, elapsed time and position displacement since launch, and some metadata. Vertical and temporal resolution varies.

The Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR) is a binary data format maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In 2015 part of the US upper air stations began to include the high resolution radiosonde measurement in their data package sent to the NCEI. These high resolution BUFR files have names as Cnnn, where nnn represents ascension number. The BUFR includes 1) metadata: station information, instrument information, balloon release information; 2) up to 1-second observations: elapsed time, level type, location displacement, pressure, height, temperature, dew point temperature, wind speed, wind direction. Time coverage is September 2015 to present, spatial coverage is US CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories.

The Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR) is a binary data format maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In 2015 part of the US upper air stations began to include the high resolution radiosonde measurement in their data package sent to the NCEI. These high resolution BUFR files have names as Cnnn, where nnn represents ascension number. The BUFR includes 1) metadata: station information, instrument information, balloon release information; 2) up to 1-second observations: elapsed time, level type, location displacement, pressure, height, temperature, dew point temperature, wind speed, wind direction. Time coverage is September 2015 to present, spatial coverage is US CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories.

This is a dataset of high resolution upper air soundings collected by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR) format. The parameters and metadata captured at each level contain time displacement, latitude displacement, longitude displacement, geopotential height, pressure, temperature, dew point temperature, wind speed, wind direction, level significance (flags). Many reports are at 2-second resolution ~3500 levels for a full ascent, some are at 1-second resolution: ~7000 levels (but we have seen up to 14500 levels). Few observations in this data set are at low resolution (standard+significant levels). That data are from Oct 2, 2014 - present, updated monthly. In 2003, the WMO members approved a migration from traditional alphanumeric codes (TAC)to table driven code forms (TDCF) BUFR for data distribution on the Global Telecommunications System (GTS). The TDCF BUFR, also known as just BUFR, is a binary data format maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Compared with the traditional alphanumeric codes (TAC), the BUFR offers great advantages of flexibility and expandability, allowing for the dissemination of much higher vertical resolution with the reporting of the time and position at each level and extra metadata. The Commission agreed on the deadline of November 2014 to stop the parallel distribution of TAC and BUFR data. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has maintained an archive of global radiosonde BUFR data since October of 2014, which will complement NCEI's real-time archiving of National Weather Service (NWS) BUFR stream commencing in May of 2017.

**Please note, this dataset has been superseded by a newer version (see below). Users should not use this version except in rare cases (e.g., when reproducing previous studies that used this version).**Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive is a digital data set archived at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA) consists of radiosonde and pilot balloon observations at over 1500 globally distributed stations. Observations are available for standard, surface, tropopause and significant levels. Variables include: Pressure, Temperature, Geopotential Height, Dewpoint, Depression, Wind Direction, and Wind Speed. The period of record varies from station to station, with many extending from 1905 to 2016. Station records for version 1 are available by contacting NCEI Customer Support. IGRA data originate from 11 different sources and have passed through a set of rigorous quality assurance procedures.

The Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC) consist of time series of radiosonde-based temperature anomalies for the years 1958-present in which the temporal inhomogeneities resulting from changes in instruments and observing practices have been reduced to the extent possible. Developed through a collaborative effort involving NOAA scientists from the Air Resources Laboratory, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and NCEI, the RATPAC time series are based on data from 85 stations distributed around global land areas and are available on 13 atmospheric pressure levels: the surface, 850, 700, 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 70, 50, and 30 hPa. Two sub-products, RATPAC-A and RATPAC-B, were derived using different approaches to meet this need based largely in part on the Temporal Homogenization of Monthly Radiosonde Temperature Data (LKS) bias-adjusted dataset. RATPAC-A contains adjusted global, hemispheric, tropical, and extratropical mean temperature anomalies. From 1958 through 1995, the bases of the data are on spatial averages of LKS adjusted 87-station temperature data. After 1995, they are based on the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA) station data, combined using a first difference method. RATPAC-B contains data for individual stations as well as large-scale arithmetic averages corresponding to areas used for RATPAC-A. The station data consist of adjusted data produced by LKS for the period 1958-1997 and unadjusted data from IGRA after 1997. The regional mean time series in RATPAC-B are based on arithmetic averaging of these station data, rather than the first difference method used to create RATPAC-A. The difference between this version and the original version of RATPAC is that the IGRA component of Version 2 is taken from IGRA v2 rather than IGRA v1.