The NWS is proposing modifications to the North American surface analysis prepared by NCEP’s Weather Prediction Center (WPC).  Specifically, the North American surface analysis will be reduced in domain, with less coverage over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It will also be made available earlier.

By reducing the area of coverage over the Eastern Pacific and Western Atlantic oceans the WPC will be able to release the analysis approximately 30 minutes earlier, about 1 hour after observation time.  The current domain was defined at a time when the North American analysis was distributed by facsimile and only one chart could be sent for each analysis time and this chart needed to meet the needs of a wide variety of users.  With the availability of several different surface analyses from different centers, it no longer makes sense to delay the data-rich North American analysis in order to prepare an analysis over a large section of the adjacent Oceans.  See the surface analysis faq for more information.