GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network

Paramaribo (Suriname) first GRUAN site in South America

Station

With the establishment of a new site in Paramaribo we have reached the landmark of the first GRUAN site on the South American continent. This is another important milestone in the development of the network, that brings us closer to GRUAN's goal to expand to 30-40 sites worldwide, located in various climate zones.

The Meteorological Service of Suriname (MDS) has accepted the invitation by GCOS secretariat to join GRUAN. The Paramaribo station, co-operated by MDS and Royal Meteorological Institute (KNMI) from the Netherlands, is located in the heart of the tropics, and will contribute to GRUAN with regular upper air soundings performed with the Vaisala RS41 as well as ozone soundings. The site also contributes to other scientific networks, such as BSRN, GAW, NDACC, and SHADOZ. Hopefully this will be the first of additional sites in South America, which is a large and climatologically important region that unfortunately still is underrepresented in GRUAN. The Lead Centre is working on configuring the data streams, meaning that soon GRUAN data will be available for this site.

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