World Meteorological Organization

The GCOS Upper-Air Network (GUAN) is a program of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) (link is external). The GUAN consists of stations selected from the Global Observing System of the World Weather Watch.

Program Management: The Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate (AOPC) (link is external) was established to define the requirements for meteorological observations for GCOS. AOPC is responsible for the planning and implementation of GUAN in cooperation with the World Weather Watch of the WMO.

Data Management: The Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the NCEI act as joint data analysis centres for GUAN. Their responsibilities are:

NCEI

• Update and quality control daily data
• Apply bias adjustments to daily data
• Calculate monthly statistics (MONADS) from the bias-adjusted daily data
• Report on historical and metadata reception and improve metadata
• Provide daily and monthly data to users

The Hadley Centre

• Improve monthly station data base
• Improve bias adjustments to monthly data
• Analyze monthly upper air data
• Provide grid products with reduced biases
• Create global and regional monthly statistics