December 15, 1998

MEMORANDUM TO:  Record
FROM:           Dennis A. Keyser -- NP22
Subject:        Changes to 3DVAR/OI/SSI-Data Preprocessor
                (September 21, 1998 Version -- UPDATE # 3)

The September 21, 1998 version of the data preprocessor program
(PREPDATA) was updated for the third time.  UPDATE #3 was
implemented on 1200 UTC 15 December 1998.  Except where noted,
the changes below affect all three versions, 3DVAR, OI, and SSI.

*********************  U P D A T E   # 3  ***********************

I.  GENERAL CHANGES

     1) Changed all calls to BUFRLIB routine ABORT to BUFRLIB
routine BORT (BORT replaced ABORT in BUFRLIB to avoid conflict
with FORTRAN intrinsic subroutine ABORT. [MAIN, FIZZ01]


II.  NON-OPERATIONAL CHANGES SPECIFIC TO A DATA TYPE

   A.  CHANGES TO ERS SCATTEROMETER DATA PROCESSING

     1) GLOBAL: No longer encodes ERS scatterometer incident
angle (mnemonics A1, A2, A3), azimuth angle (mnemonics B1, B2,
B3), backscatter (mnemonics S1, S2, S3) and error estimate
(mnemonics E1, E2, E3) into PREPBUFR file.  These had all been
set to ZERO and were never used by any subsequent programs.  This
change saves 4-8% space in the Global (AVN/FNL) PREPBUFR files.  
[MAIN, W3FIZZ, BUFRTABLE]