MDC Data Input Formats

All MAP data are stored in a relational database at the MDC (MAP Data Centre), with the exception of images. Thus the MAP database is table based. In order to insert data into the database most efficiently, we have designed the following format recommendations for table-based data and images. If you consider to use an alternative format, please first contact the MDC for finding the best solution to copy your data into the MAP database.

Table based data

Table-based data you send to MDC must be in an ASCII file format with the structure desribed in the following or in a Microsoft Excel (see Exceptions) format. The data must be in absolute values and not in a coded format. If any quality control marks for the meteorological data are available, they should be declared clearly. Geographic positions must be included as well.

1. Declaration of Contents, general Structure

  1. Each file contains at least one header row, with a clear description of the contents and the creation date of the file itself. The first character of each header line is always a "#".
  2. Each file contains a complete description of the contents or a reference to a text file, which contains this information (giving the description within the file itself is preferred).
    - Name, address and email of the responsible person.
    - Caption of the data row with declaration of data source, unit, precision, ...
  3. If it is only possible to identify the data by the file name, you must send an extra file with the information of points 1 and 2 as well.
  4. The maximum file name length is 32 characters. The following ASCII-characters are allowed: A...Z, a...z, 0...9, _, - , . and space.
  5. The row length is limited to 64 kBytes.
  6. The file length is not limited.
  7. Dummy values of a variable are -99.9 or -999.9 depending on the format of the variable.

2. Format and Character

  1. The MDC accepts only ASCII files (US ASCII 8-Bit) with line structure (no binary data files!).
  2. Apart from "tab", "line feed" and "carriage return" do not use characters of the ASCII collating sequence with an ordinal number below 032. Thus the complete ASCII character set for the MDC is: 009, 010, 013, 032...255.
  3. The data columns are formatted free or fixed, according to the declaration in the header of the data file.
  4. The data columns (formatted free or fixed) must be separated by "tab", ";" or "blanks(spaces)". At least one separator must be inserted between two columns.
  5. The following compression methods of your data files are accepted:
    - Compression with gzip filename.gz
    - Compression with tar and gzip filename.tar.gz
    - Compression with pkzip filename.zip
    For all other compression methods contact MDC first.
  6. ASCII files written under UNIX terminate lines with a "line feed". PCs, however, terminate text lines with two characters: a "carriage return" and a "line feed". Thus be cautious: if you send ASCII files produced on a PC to the MDC via a UNIX platform, you may have to do some reformatting!

3. Data exchange

The standard Data exchange procedure is by FTP. If you do not dispose of a FTP- connection to the MDC, send your data on a 3.5" DOS formatted diskette to the MDC. For all other data carrier or a direct database link, please contact the MDC.

  1. The anonymous FTP address of the MDC is ftp.sma.ch (129.132.77.123). To login use ''anonymous'' as username and your email address as password. Put the data in the directory ''/outgoing/map'' and send an email to the MDC (map[at]meteoswiss.ch) that the data have been transmitted.

4. Units

  1. In general we use the SI-Units and the common units in meteorology.
  2. The time has always to be given in UTC. If the time in your data file is not in UTC, then you must declare the difference between the time of your data and UTC in the header of the file.
  3. Geographic positions: longitude (°.dec), latitude (°.dec) (Minutes and Seconds in decimal degrees)
    and height (m above sea-level or gpm).
  4. Pressure: (hPa)
  5. Temperature: (°C)
  6. rel. Humidity: (%)
  7. Wind direction: (°) (decimal degrees)
  8. Wind speed: (m/s)
  9. Precipitation: (mm/h or mm/day) (for daily precipitation give the exact sampling period, e.g. 06 UTC to 06 UTC).

5. Exceptions

Microsoft Excel files (Version 3 to 7) are accepted as well, if the information described under point 1.2 is included. If it is impossible to send the data in the format described above, please send a complete description of the data structure as well as the decoding procedure for the data.

6. Examples

6.1 Wind data of some surface stations 

# Wind data (u,v) from MAP Case 5    27.6.96
# H. Hirter, IACETH, CH-8093 Zuerich, hans.hirter@env.ethz.ch
#
# Date period: 9.11.95 0h until 14.11.95 0h (UTC)
# N            : Station number
# TIME         : hours since 9.11.95 0h (UTC)             (h.dec)
# U            : hourly mean value east component of wind   (m/s)
# V            : hourly mean value north component of wind  (m/s)
#
# Stations:
# Number  Name       short form  long(°) lat.(°) height(m)
#   4     Wynau          WYN      7.78   47.25     422
#   6     Vaduz          VAD      9.25   47.15     460
#  14     Altdorf        ALT      8.63   46.86     449
#  33     Guetsch        GUE      8.61   46.65    2282
#  53     Bern-Liebefeld BER      7.41   46.93     565
#
# N    TIME      U      V
  4    0.67    0.1    0.2
  4    1.67    0.3    0.2
  4    2.67    0.1    0.1
  4    3.67    0.2    0.5
  6    0.67    1.7   -1.9
  6    1.67    1.6   -1.1
  6    2.67    1.9   -1.5
  6    3.67    2.7   -1.8
....

6.2 Radiosonde file

# METEOROLOGICAL SONDE DATA Payerne 17.4.96
# H. Hirter, IACETH, CH-8093 Zuerich, hans.hirter@env.ethz.ch
#
# Date : 2.7.95  23:03 (UTC)
# Station: Payerne 06610  SPAY    6.95  46.82   491
# HE : Height (m)
# PR : Pressure (hPa)
# TD : Temperature (°C)
# HR : rel. Humidity (%)
# DT : Seconds since launch (s)
# U  : east component of wind  (m/s)
# V  : north component of wind  (m/s)
#
#
#    HE      PR     TD   HR     DT      U      V
      0  949.00  17.50  84.00    0   -0.5    0.0
      6  948.37  19.05  76.50    1 -999.9 -999.9
     32  945.47  19.45  68.50    6 -999.9 -999.9
     41  944.46  19.79  68.25    8 -999.9 -999.9
     46  943.95  19.90  68.13    9 -999.9 -999.9
     67  941.69  19.83  66.88   13 -999.9 -999.9
     84  939.82  20.54  65.75   16 -999.9 -999.9
     90  939.20  20.56  65.38   17 -999.9 -999.9
    110  937.00  20.88  63.71   21 -999.9 -999.9
    119  936.06  20.87  62.86   23 -999.9 -999.9
    123  935.59  20.91  62.43   24 -999.9 -999.9
    147  933.04  20.65  61.00   29 -999.9 -999.9
    157  931.91  20.61  60.50   31 -999.9 -999.9
    162  931.34  20.56  60.25   32   -5.6   -3.5
.....

Image Based data

In general all image-based data at MDC are in GIF-Format. GIF format is a widely used compression format, which can easily be displayed by all known WWW browsers. Postscript files readable by ghostview are also accepted. But MDC will convert these files to GIF format to allow for a preview on the WWW.

HINT: Press the right mouse button to save a GIF-image on a Netscape browser.

Remarks:

If you have a format, which is not listed above, please contact the MDC. We are sure to find a solution to put the data in the MAP database by reformatting the data.

MAP Data Centre - May '05 - MAP WebMaster