Design Issues in Nearly Real-Time Meteorological-Data Systems at Local Sites

Abstract A scheme developed at the University of Maryland is described to illustrate the high-level design decisions which must be made in order to fully utilize the asynchronous character-oriented data transmitted over the Domestic Data Service. We list the major functions which nearly real-time meteorological-data systems must perform at local sites, and then emphasize solutions to the high-level design problems implicit in these functions, including processing sequence, data quality control, on-line data file management, off-line data archive content, and archive format.