SYNOP (
surface synoptic observations) is a numerical
code (called FM-12 by
WMO) used for reporting
weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically sent every six hours by
Deutscher Wetterdienst on
shortwave and
low frequency using
RTTY. A report consists of groups of numbers (and
slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. It can be decoded by open-source software such as seaTTY, metaf2xml or
Fldigi.