The ADPUPA data includes land and ship launched radiosondes and pibals. Data may be available at up to 20 mandatory levels from 1000mb to 1mb, plus a few significant levels. The AIRCFT data includes commercial, some military and reconnaissance flight level reports. The SATWND data includes winds derived from cloud drift analysis. The AIRCAR data includes observations from aircraft takeoff and landings.

This dataset is maintained in NCEP BUFR format, and updated weekly by DSS using files prepared by NCEP. Software which extracts data from the BUFR file, and places it into a basic text file can be found in BUFRdecode_ADPuprair.tar. Data archived within this dataset spans the period from April 2000 to near current. DS353.4 provides the same data from 1973 to 2007 in NMC Office Note 29 (ON29) format. BUFR format reports contain additional information that is not carried over to ON29 format, including the the original raw GTS string reports.

NCEP uses Automated Data Processing (ADP), to decode and reformat the GTS reports. More information about the collection and quality of this data is in Observational Data Processing at NCEP and NCAR TN404 An Introduction to Atmospheric and Oceanographic Datasets, chapter 3 .

DSS has collected for users a variety of important usage details.

For data prior to 2000 see DS353.4.