Buoys position: data set description page


Data set source
Information on available Data
Quality Control Processing
Data format
Data selection page

Data set source

  • Buoys in the North Atlantic: position of drifting buoys from meteorological services involved in the European Group on ODAS Stations (EGOS), from Argos messages (trajectories studies). During FASTEX, EGOS members were Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom.
  • Other buoys over the FASTEX domain: For 139 buoys presents in the FASTEX domain, but not belonging to the EGOS network, positions were retrieved from a file provided by the NOAA.


    • Information on available data in the FASTEX Central Archive

  • Available since: 4 FEB 1998 - Last Updated: 9 FEB 1999
  • Time Coverage (YYYYMMDD): between 19970101 and 19970301
  • Geographic Coverage (decimal degrees): latitude between 20 and 73, longitude between -140 and 17
  • Number of observations: 44000 (about 735 messages a day)


    • Quality Control Processing

  • EGOS buoys
    Météo-France/Centre de Météorologie Marine (CMM, Brest) received in delayed time the raw data from the Argos centre (French Global Processing Centre (FRGPC)) of Toulouse. Argos location and time are taken without interpolation.
  • Other buoys
    Météo-France/FASTEX Central Archive received in delayed time the position files of a number of buoys, from the NOAA. Location and time are taken without interpolation from this file.


    • Data format

    Data provided in ASCII files including date, position and quality flags. 
    Each data line contains  6 fields, separated by spaces. The contents and sizes
of the 6 fields that appear in each data record are as follows (Unit for Unit,
Form for FORTRAN Format, Miss for Missing value) :

 No Parameter                                          Unit           Form. Miss
 -- ---------                                          ----           ----- ----

  1 Timestamp for the creation of the row              YYYYMMDDHHMISS a14
  2 WMO station or platform identifier                                a14
  3 Latitude                                           dec.degr       f8.3
  4 Longitude                                          dec.degr       f8.3
  5 Collecting date/time (UTC)                         YYYYMMDDHHMISS a14
  6 Quality control flag for location                                 i4    -999

Flags meaning
-------------

Data quality flags can take one of the following values :
           1: 350m < accuracy < 1000m
           2: 150m < accuracy < 350m
           3: accuracy < 150m
(available only for EGOS buoys)
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    Updated: 9 February 1999