Regional ATOVS Retransmission Services (RARS)

RARS Data quality monitoring

RARS data quality monitoring takes place at two levels:

• The Regional Processing Centres are responsible for monitoring the performance of the RARS in their region;
• In addition to EARS monitoring, the EUMETSAT NWP SAF is monitoring the whole RARS network and routinely compares the data from all RARS with (full orbit) global data .
  
  Data quality flags and indicators are generated when the data are processed by the AAPP software. Embedded in the format of the retransmitted data, they alert users to any inherent quality problems that might be present in the data themselves.

Monitoring by the NWP SAF

The NWP SAF lead institute, the UK Met Office, is responsible for routinely and automatically performing comparisons of RARS data sets and the equivalent data in the global data sets received via another means. In this way the RARS data sets are examined for consistency with equivalent data that has not passed through the RARS processing chain. Such consistency is vital to enable the RARS data to be used alongside global data, for example, in NWP applications.

The NWP SAF publishes the results of the consistency checks on the NWP SAF web site (Specialist Information section, accessible through registration). and has the capability to generate alerts and send them via email to the appropriate centre. Data locally received in Exeter, UK are also compared with corresponding RARS data.

Monitoring by Regional Processing Centres

According to the RARS operators standards (See:Operators Standards), service-related information should be gathered and published. Each RARS Regional Processing Centre is responsible for monitoring the completeness of the data collected from the regional network of direct readout stations and retransmitted by the Centre. Data reception monitoring is based on a comparison of the actual data received by the Regional Processing Centre with that expected from the nominal regional configuration. Data retransmission monitoring involves maintaining a record of the completeness and timeliness of all data sets retransmitted. The results of all data monitoring are published on the Regional Processing Centres' web sites.

The following links will take you to the monitoring web sites for EARS and Asia-Pacific RARS :

JMA Meteorological Satellite Center (Japan)
Bureau of Meteorology (Australia)
EARS (EUMETSAT)

Note. Additional links will appear here as further regional centres establish their web sites.

Other pages of this RARS section

• RARS concept
• RARS motivation, background and benefits
• RARS overall approach
• Current implementation status
• RARS data coding summary
• How to access RARS data
• RARS contacts and links

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