The hydrostatic checking of radiosonde heights and temperatures

"The present NMC operations include a hydrostatic check of radiosonde data, but it can at best result in the rejection by analysis codes of questionable data. It does this by assigning flags to the heights, used later by the analysis preprocessor in determining data quality. In a number of cases, the operational code results in bad data being kept, good data being rejected, or good data being rejected in addition to bad data in a report. The approach reported in this paper is designed to identify hydrostatic errors that can be corrected, and to make the correction. It is recommended that it be incorporated into operations just prior to the operational 'hydrostatic check,' HYDROCHEK. In this way, the corrected data will not get flagged, and will be used in the subsequent analysis. This procedure will not correct any of the present failings of HYDROCHEK, which must await it replacement"--Background, paragraph 1. 1988 NWS (National Weather Service) NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Library Public Domain 2285