Both Kowloon (Hong Kong) and Dakar (Senegal) have accepted the invitation by GCOS secretariat to join GRUAN. The Dakar-Yoff station, operated by Agence nationale de l’Aviation Civile et de la Meteorologie (ANACIM), is the first site on the African continent and will contribute to GRUAN with regular upper air soundings performed with the Vaisala RS41. Hopefully this will be the first of several additional sites in Africa, a large and climatologically important region that unfortunately still is underrepresented in GRUAN.
The participation of the Kowloon station, operated by the Hong Kong Observatory, will provide reference measurements from a sub-tropical region in south east Asia, which is a very valuable addition to GRUAN. Kowloon station will contribute to GRUAN with twice daily RS41 radiosoundings, and regular CFH soundings for in-situ stratospheric water vapor measurements are foreseen.
The Lead Centre is working on configuring the data streams, meaning that soon GRUAN data will be available for both new sites.
