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ABOUT METEOCODE
Meteocode is a software package for IBM PC and compatible computers, for decoding weather information transmitted over the GTS (Global Telecommunications System) and the Internet. Meteocode takes an input from a previously received data file, and will produce weather reports in text form, or create a variety of weather charts.
BACKGROUND
Around the world, there are over 8000 weather stations, monitoring conditions every day of the year. These stations land, sea or air based based stations are continuously taking observations every hour. The type of data collected by these stations varies from the obvious such as air temperature, air pressure and wind speed etc., to more specific information such as the current weather situation, or air turbulence.
There are several meteorological offices around the world which receive the information collected by these stations, and compile this data to meteorological reports. The meteorological office then broadcasts these reports, usually over radio links for a variety of people.
Because the mass of data being broadcasted by the meteorological offices is so great, the reports are transmitted in a coded form to reduce the time required to transmit these weather observations. These codes are transmitted much quicker than text-based reports. These coded reports are transmitted by a variety of methods, but the main method used today is via radio. The system used by most meteorological offices is a form of Radio Teletype (RTTY), which is mainly transmitted on the HF (High Frequency) radio bands in the range of 1 - 30Mhz. Recently these files have also become accessible over the internet.
Meteocode takes these coded weather reports, and decodes
them to produce readable text reports, or produce
a variety of weather charts. All you need
to be able to use Meteocode, is access to these coded transmissions.
Meteocode will accept input from an ASCII text file containing the reports.
The text reports, or graphical charts produced, can then be viewed, printed,
or saved to disk for future use.
WHAT DO I NEED TO RUN METEOCODE?
You will need two things to use Meteocode
1) An IBM PC or compatible computer to run Meteocode on.
2) Access to the raw weather data in text file form (via
radio or internet)
Meteocode is an MS-DOS based program, which will run on even the most modest of PCs. The main program is run via an extremely user-friendly Graphical User Interface.
Creating weather reports or charts is extremely simple using Meteocode. Simply select the file containing the raw data, then select the messages you wish to include, and Meteocode carries out the rest!
After a short while, Meteocode will then present you with
a readable weather report, or weather chart, which can be viewed, printed,
or saved to disk. See some example charts and reports here.
