DSS presents a global synoptic set of hourly surface data reports. These were operationally collected by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The data includes land and marine reports received via the Global Telecommunications System (GTS). Variables recorded in the reports include pressure, temperature, dewpoint depression, wind direction and speed. Precipitation data has been decoded for the U.S. and Canada. A similar dataset, DS464.0, has been derived from this dataset since April 2000.

The ADPSFC data includes SYNOP, METAR, AWOS, and ASOS land report types. The SFCSHP data includes moving ship, fixed ship, MARS (moving and fixed) and buoy (moored and drifting) marine report types. Reports number in the thousands. Note: Ship data has been stripped from all BUFR files ranging from Dec 12, 2007 to the present. Users can find near-realtime ship data in NCEP's PREPBUFR data DS337.0. Long term ship data can be found in the ICOADS dataset DS540.0.

This dataset is maintained in NCEP BUFR format, and updated monthly by DSS using weekly 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_ADPsfc.tar . Data archived within this dataset spans the period from April 2000 to near current. DS464.0 provides the same data from 1973 to near current 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. Similar data produced at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) from a USAF binary set (DATSAV2) is available in ds463.2, covering the period from 1901 to near current.

More information is available.