An Integrated Meteorological Surface Observation System By Wan Mohd. Nazri Wan Daud

1. An Integrated Meteorological Surface Observation System By Wan Mohd. Nazri Wan Daud Malaysian Meteorological Department Due to the increasing and evolving demands for local weather information the Malaysian Meteorological Department embarked on a program to integrate the diverse AWS and manual systems existing in the observing program. This process was started in 2008 starting with the installation of 108 new unmanned AWS stations culminating in the design and implementation of the server cluster which now acts as the end point for both manual and automatic stations be they manned Principal or unmanned climatological. Moreover meteorological surface observations associated with other systems such as Marine or GAW can now be included in this “first step” action plan. For the purposes of the project surface observations refers to terrestrial based in-situ (direct measurements) surface observing systems that measure the common near-surface atmospheric parameters. The system includes three main modules, two of which are new innovations used for the first time in any observing system. With the increasing demand for real-time data increases, the system has been designed to work with a myriad of communication methods and protocols.

2. Integrated Meteorological Surface Observation System 108 Stesen Meteorologi Auksiliari

3. National Integrated Surface Meteorological Observing System (NISMOS) Power Supply Stabilised AC with backup Solar power with accessories SYSTEM LAYOUT AND DATA FLOW Central Data Retrieval & Ingest Module Network And Instrument Monitoring Module WAN (Internet) Acquisition Electronics Sensors Suite WAN Interface & Communications Equipment Logging Processing QC Transmission Non-Volatile Storage Data Aggregation, and QC Module 1-minute Data Repository Data From Other Systems User Access System Configuration Data Viewing Power Supply Application Module Maintenance Equipment Central CLIMATOLOGICAL DATABASE (MAKLIM) FORECAST APPLICATIONS PORTAL RESEARCH On-Site

4. WAN (Internet) Central Data Retrieval & Ingest Module WAN Interface & Communications Equipment Real-time TCP Stream VPN Tunnel Keeps track of missing data due to comms break, and requests missing data when comms returns Communication breakdowns which are normal over cheaper GPRS networks, can cause breaks in data sets which would be flagged as missing or would have to be retrieved via manual downloads. These methods are costly. With the innovative data synchronization method over VPN all data is now available over the same link once communications resume.

5. Quality Control of Meteorological Observations Data While timely data is important, the requirements for quality data is also a prerequisite. These requirements are handled by an innovative rule-set based quality control module which has the ability to accept data from both automatic as well manual sources. Therefore a single point of entry into the database allows for QC rules to be homogenous throughout the dataset whatever the temporal frequency of the dataset. The use of rule-sets enables differing rules for differing purposes and gives a better view of actual weather phenomena with the inclusion of range, temporal and spatial rules. QC0 Non real-time data Station Standards Manually entered into database Data Retrieval in real time Real-time QC (use rule-set to find errors) QC1 Database real-time & non real-time Non real-time QC (use rule-set to correct errors) QC2 Human QC (decision on data that auto QC is unable to correct) HQC