LAMP Change Notice
TUESDAY AUGUST 22, 2006
Attention LAMP users:
Effective August 23, 2006, a modification
to the GFS-LAMP guidance for precipitation characteristics in BUFR format will be
implemented. This modification is necessary to correctly reclassify the categories of
the GFS LAMP precipitation characteristics guidance (drizzle, continuous,
and showers) in BUFR format to be consistent with the BUFR definitions of this element.
Prior to this fix, the GFS LAMP precipitation characteristics in BUFR format were
being categorized as:
1 = showers
2 = drizzle
3 = continuous
However, the correct definition for these categories of precipitation characteristics in BUFR format are:
1 = drizzle
2 = continuous
3 = showers
as specified in our documentation
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/gfslamp/docs/BufrLAMPCategory05.pdf
If you have been using this BUFR field, and interpreting the categories as the documentation indicates, note that
they were misaligned and not what they were documented to be. For example, if the guidance indicated "1" for a
station, the documentation indicates that is drizzle, but the actual LAMP forecast was for showers. The LAMP
software should have mapped the "1" to a "3" which would have correctly indicated showers according to the documentation.
Effective with the 2100 UTC cycle on August 23, 2006, the software will be
modified to fix these categorizations so that they are consistent with the BUFR documentation.
This web site will be updated to indicate the cycle with which the change takes place
once that information is known.
This only affects the GFS LAMP BUFR product, and only the BUFR descriptor element of 0 60 092 Conditional Precipitation Forecast (categories)
We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.
Please let us know if you see any problems or have any questions.
Thank you for your interest in LAMP.
Judy Ghirardelli
NWS/OST/MDL/LAMP
www.nws.noaa.gov
