Abstract:
The Fleet Numerical Weather Center (FNWC) in Monterey, California since 1982 is producing a global data set from the Automatic Digital Information Network (AUTODIN). These data are hourly observations from global ship observations. Parameters included in the hourly observations are the following: Air, sea, and dew point temperature; cloud cover; humidity; pressure; winds; weather; surface
... currents; sea surface heights; waves; swell; and sea ice. Information on the AUTODIN ship data tapes is written on 9-track tape at 1600CPI. Each line of information contains 80 characters, with blank fill to the right of the last non-blank character. Each record on the tape contains from one to 20 such lines. Thus the length of any record will be 80 n characters where n is more than 1 and less than 20. (Maximum record length is 1600 characters.) Information from each AUTODIN data cut is blocked as follows: a. All except the last record for this data cut will contain 20 lines (1600 characters). b. The last record for the cut will contain from one to 20 lines. All of the information on the tape is contained in one file (An end-of-file is NOT used to separate data cuts). There are two consecutive ends of file at the end of information. As of 05 January 1982, there will be eight cuts per day, at hours 02Z, 03Z,08Z, 09Z, 14Z, 15Z, 20Z, and 21z. Cut-times and dates which appear in the first line of information for each cut may be used as a key to check for missing data. However, the number of cuts per day might be changed in the future, so any computer program which checks these cut-times should be designed to allow more and/or different cut hours. A missing cut-time will not always indicate missing reports; in rare situations, machine problems may cause one cut to be missed, but the AUTODIN input tape for the cut might be loaded on a later cut. 
