Adding your observations to DART
First, you should understand that DART already supports a tremendous variety of observations. To fully support an observation means that the observation can be converted from its native format to the DART observation sequence format and that the observation forward operator is already implemented. Keep in mind that forward operators are not specific to any one model.
The observation converters are in the observations/obs_converter directory and you should look there for the documentation describing which converters are available.
The forward operators are functionally or logically grouped into Fortran modules in the observations/forward_operator directory. DART employs a ‘contractual’ style of programming in that the forward operator requests information from the model, and if the model cannot provide it, the forward operator may request different information in an attempt to collect the information needed to apply the operator. If the model cannot provide any of the required information, the forward operator fails, the DART QC for that observation is set to the appropriate value, and the program continues.