Page "World Meteorological Organization" Paragraph 24

In keeping with its mandate to promote the standardization of meteorological observations, the WMO maintains numerous code forms for the representation and exchange of meteorological, oceanographical, and hydrological data.

The traditional code forms, such as SYNOP, CLIMAT and TEMP, are character-based and their coding is position-based.

Newer WMO code forms are designed for portability, extensibility and universality.

These are BUFR, CREX, and, for gridded geo-positioned data, GRIB.