.A Fomat-SHEF

.A Format:

Underlined fields are mandatory.

Location: Location id, most often the NWSLI.

Date: mmdd or yymmdd.

Time Zone: Defaults to Z (Zulu) - Otherwise use code from table 6.

Obs Time: Usually DHhhmm or DHhh. For example DH0630 or DH06. If minutes are not specified, defaults to 00.

Creation Date: DCyymmddhhnn where mmdd are the only required fields. Refer to the SHEF handbook for defaults and more details.

Units Code: DUE or DUS - (English or Standard international). This field is rarely used. The default is English.

Data String Quality: DQq - Rarely used - Refer to table 10 in the SHEF Handbook.

Duration Code Var: DV - For example, to code 9 hour pcpn: DVH9. Refer to SHEF Handbook tables 11a and 11b for more details and other codes.

Data Elements: This includes the parameter code, value and qualifier (optional)

Parameter Code: Encoded using the PEDTSEP:

PE - Physical Element - See table 1 for an abbreviated version of the table in the SHEF Handbook. This is the only portion of the PEDSEP that is mandatory.

D - Duration code - See table 2.

T - Type or basic category of the data: Forecast - F, Historical - H, Observed - R, Processed - P, Contingency - C.

S - Source Code which further refines the type code.

Table 3 shows some of the options available for TS.

E - Extremum code (daily max, daily min, etc..) Table 4 list all the options for the extremum code.

P - Probability code (Table 5). Rarely used.

Value - Can be decimal or integer, can use - or +, the default being positive.

Qualifier - optional. Refer to table 10 in the SHEF Handbook. Rarely used.

Comment: Comments follow a colon (:) at the end of a line. To insert comments in the line of SHEF code, the comments must be preceded and followed by a colon (:).