The Joint CALMet XVI - CONECT 3 Conference

The Joint CALMet XVI - CONECT-3 conference was organised as a hybrid event by the WMO RTC of CNR-IBE Italy with the CALMet Working Group and the CONECT Management Group, attracting more than 200 participants from 65 countries, including 49 onsite in Florence. Under the theme 'Future-Proofing Meteorological Training: Bridging Collaboration, Experience, and Innovation', the hybrid event reflected on achievements, introduced new methodologies, and mapped future strategies, strengthening partnerships, practical learning and innovative exchange to enhance the global workforce.

CALMet XVI accommodated diverse time zones: Eastern, Florence and Western. The program had 24 keynote speeches, eight workshops, three regional discussions, and an online poster exhibition featuring 43 contributions.

The follow-up CONECT-3 meeting evaluated ongoing initiatives, shared institutional experiences, and prioritised coordination and sustainability in the WMO Global Campus. Topics included progress reports, CALMet regional insights, AI applications in training, youth engagement, gender inclusion, volunteer involvement, and succession planning.

The event reaffirmed the community's commitment, strengthened collaboration, practical tools, innovation, and inclusivity advancing global training capacity. .

EUMeTrain MTG Event Week

EUMeTrain organised another successful Event Week about the Meteosat Third Generation satellites, from 8-12 December. The event topics were divided into four groups:

• MTG-S
• MTG-I
• MTG data assimilation
• Ocean colour & sea surface temperature

This event week was mainly focused was on the recently launched MTG-S and the IRS & UVN instruments.

The event was a success, with more than 100 participants.

Users will soon be able to access the recording and lecture slides on the EUMeTrain website.

2025 Climate Symposium

The 2025 EUMETSAT Climate Symposium 'From Space to Climate Services: Co-Creation in Action' was held on 28-30 October in Darmstadt, celebrating 25 years of Climate@EUMETSAT, and gathering 170 participants from 20 Member States. Through keynotes, panels, and breakout sessions, the community examined how to better collaborate to fully exploit the potential of satellite observations for actionable climate information, to the benefit of policy and decision-making.

Main findings include:

• Satellite climate data are becoming increasingly important for providing information to policy and decision-makers for assessing ongoing environmental changes (e.g. in IPCC assessment reports).
• Climate services require high-quality, long-term, consistent climate data records, extending into NRT-like observation, as well as future climate information. Climate services would also benefit from closer co-creation of workflows with data providers.
• Stronger coordination between research and operations is essential to move scientific advances into service delivery.
• Improved data discoverability, interoperability, and cloud-readiness are key for future climate data use.

A peer-reviewed summary of the symposium will be published in the Journal of the European Meteorological Society.

FMI-EUMETSAT Aviation Forecasters Testbed 2025 - at EUMETSAT

The second forecaster testbed for 2025 was held at EUMETSAT headquarters in Darmstadt.

Twenty aviation forecasters, from 18 European countries, attended. The topics covered icing, low clouds and fog, turbulence, LI data and volcanic ash.

The training included theory, case studies, testing new aviation products, and live weather discussions. All the case studies included a short theory section about the topic and new products related to the case.

The participants were divided into groups of three throughout the training week, and the groups were changed every day. The case studies were constructed so the participants were comparing SEVIRI imagery to FCI and polar (VIIRS) products.

The focus was on using the new RGB composites and the new test products. Additional time was provided for the participants to find interesting cases for each analysed topic and post examples on Padlet.

A WhatsApp group was created for the participants, which helped build a sense of community and made it easier to communicate. The group is still active, with members continuing to share experiences from their operational shifts.

Having a testbed at EUMETSAT premises allowed EUMETSAT researchers and developers to get in touch with forecasters.

7th Joint Training in Atmospheric Composition

From the first online sessions to the final hands-on exercises in Brussels, the Seventh Joint Training on Atmospheric Composition, organised by EUMETSAT, ECMWF-CAMS and ESA, and hosted by BIRA-IASB, demonstrated the value of combining theory, practice and networking activities in a single learning journey. Bringing together early-career researchers and professionals from different regions, the training created a great environment to focus on real-world applications of atmospheric composition data. Attention was given to aerosols, dust, and wildfire monitoring.

Throughout the course, participants moved beyond basic theory, engaging directly with satellite products, modelling outputs, and validation datasets through guided practical sessions. The use of the WEkEO platform played a key role in this experience, allowing participants to explore data during the training and continue working independently afterwards. Scientific discussions emerged naturally during group work, especially around retrieval methodologies and the interpretation of aerosol products.

Feedback confirmed that the training met its objectives, with participants (25 on-site and 223 online unique participants) reporting increased confidence in using satellite data and applying newly acquired skills in their own research and professional activities. The course succeeded in fostering collaboration, knowledge exchange, and long-term capacity building, leaving participants excited and ready to apply atmospheric composition data in operational and research contexts.

Resources, including webinars recordings, are available at: https://atmostraining.info/

Turning Expertise into Training - Fast and Together

This past autumn, EUMETCAL ran two intensive week-long hackathons — radar meteorology in Utrecht and satellite meteorology in Offenbach — bringing together meteorological experts and instructional designers to create advanced training materials.

The format proved highly productive. Participants selected authentic weather cases, refined learning objectives, and rapidly built draft activities. Instructional designers converted rough concepts into working prototypes while experts added operational insight and scientific accuracy. This constant exchange maintained both pace and quality.

Each team delivered complete prototype lessons by the end of the week — work that would typically take months. The results demonstrate the value of focused time, shared space, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The process continues: instructional designers are now refining the prototypes into polished modules, with experts reviewing each iteration before publication on the EUMETCAL website.

A Short Course to Visualise Wildfires with EUMETSAT Sentinel-3 data products

A new short course demonstrating how to easily visualise wildfire data using Sentinel-3 products was created by the Atmospheric Composition team at EUMETSAT, to show how to download and process data from the Sentinel-3 satellite.

The training focused on the numerous fires that raged across northwestern Spain and northern Portugal, between 15 and 18 August 2025, which filled the skies with thick smoke and turned large parts of the Iberian Peninsula into hotspots of atmospheric pollution. The Sentinel-3 SLSTR instrument captured these events in real time, detecting the precise locations of active fires through its Fire Radiative Power (FRP) product. At the same time, Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) observations revealed intense smoke plumes, with values exceeding 1.0 at 550nm, far above what is normally seen in this region.

Creating visualisations of these events may seem difficult, but this 1.5-hour course has made it simple. More than 200 people registered, showing the high interest in the topic. Participants learned how to use EUMETSAT's Data Store, and related tools, to access, explore, and visualise FRP and AOD data over the Iberian Peninsula on 16 Augus' 2025, transforming complex satellite observations into clear images.

Users can access the recordings and slides at EUMETSAT Classroom.