The Current Application of Meteorological Code Forms and Impacts of Migration on Table Driven Code Forms

Meteorological code is composed of TAC (the Traditional Alphanumeric Code form) and TDCFs (the Table Driven Code Forms). In view of the limitation of TAC and the advantage of TDCFs on data representation, the transition from TAC to TDCFs within the next decade is planned by World Meteorological Organization (WMO).The current applications of meteorological code forms in China are given:TAC is still used mainly in the generation, transmission, processing, storage and application of meteorological observation data, while TDCFs are still not widely used.The main points of the transition plan from TAC to TDCFs of WMO are also summarized. The impacts of the transition to TDCFs, which are mainly to the operational systems such as the current observation system, telecommunication system, data processing and storage system of meteorological services of different levels in China, are analyzed. For the observation system, new coding system has to be deployed to encode the TDCFs observation data. For international and national telecommunication system, the ability of the transmission of TDCFs and the ability to convert between TDCFs and TAC have to be built, the capability of dual transmission of TAC and TDCFs data has to be supported. For data processing and storage system, the functions of the decoding and storage of TDCFs data have to be provided.The primary proposals of the implementation of the transition to TDCFs in China are suggested. The national transition plan should be constituted as quickly as possible; the development of transition core software systems should be arranged; the experimental projects of transition should be conducted nationally and internationally; the national training should be organized.