CALMET XIV Conference: Bringing Together the Best of Online to Learning

27 September to 01 October 2021

The CALMet XIV Conference will be hosted by Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, Argentina, on 27 September-1 October 2021. This conference will be an event that brings together educators, trainers and managers from universities, research institutions, and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services. It provides an opportunity for a community from around the world to collaborate and network on workforce development, in support of the global weather, water and climate industry.

This year, the CALMet theme will be Bringing Together the Best of Online to Learning. The conference proposes a 'flipped-learning' conference approach - rather than simply a series of presentations, the event will be highly interactive. As it will be entirely online, the conference days will consist of a few live plenary and group sessions for various time zones, as well as interactive opportunities outside the live sessions. The conference will encourage practitioners in the education and training sector to discuss, debate and share views and techniques on the challenges/opportunities arising from the following sub-themes: Education and Training Challenges and Opportunities, Online Teaching and Learning, and Collaboration.

Register for the conference.

Space Weather courses now available

11 to 15 October 2021 / online, classroom

Massive, sporadic eruptions of highly energetic matter and radiation from the Sun can trigger space weather processes in the Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere. Technology that relies on satellite navigation and radio wave propagation can be impacted, as well as large energy transport systems like electrical grids. Harmful radiation at flight altitude can increase when a solar storm hits Earth.

Impacted stakeholders need to learn about those natural hazards and increase their resilience and awareness. The need for space weather staff, like meteorologists, to meet certain competence levels will increase, as more nations and institutes start to install a space weather room, similar to the familiar forecast rooms.

That is why The Space Weather Education Center now offers a "Space Weather Introductory Course" on the eumetcal.eu portal. The course covers the Sun, solar storms, heliosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere, instruments and methods to observe solar activity, and reading and interpreting STCE space weather forecasts.

More information can be found in the Eumetcal.eu training catalogue course Space Weather: what, impact, services.

EUMeTrain, HSAF Snow Event Week

22 to 26 November 2021 / Online

Reliable snow cover extent is of vital importance in understanding the current and future climate, hydrological, and ecological dynamics. Operational snow products, namely H10 (Snow extent (snow mask) by VIS/IR radiometry), H11 (Snow Status (dry/wet) by MW radiometry), H12 (Effective snow cover by VIS/IR radiometry AVHRR), H13 (Snow Water Equivalent by MW radiometry), H31 (Snow extent for flat land (snow mask) by VIS/NIR of SEVIRI) and H32 (Snow detection (global) by VIS/IR radiometry AVHRR) have been developed since 2008 within H SAF. Furthermore, the development of additional snow products is in progress. Considering the different characteristics of snow in mountainous and flat areas, various algorithms are used to produce snow products for these regions. Products are then merged to have a single, coherent snow product.

During this event, H SAF snow products retrieval, visualization, and analysis will be presented. The training will use a Jupyter Notebook, which allows easy and straightforward data analysis and the possibility of live interaction; this Notebook requires little programming knowledge. Users can interact easily with EUMETSAT HSAF snow products and learn how to download, visualize, and perform spatial and temporal analysis of snow cover for an area of interest without getting lost in data formats.

This event will also discuss the validation of the H SAF snow dataset and their contribution in hydrological modelling for water balance evaluation will be presented.

OSI SAF webinars coming soon

Early 2022 / Online

The Ocean and Sea Ice SAF (OSI SAF) team is presenting a series of webinars providing an overview of the OSI SAF products and their applications.

The purpose of each webinar will be to show the products: explain how they are processed and validated, what they can be used for, and how they can be used. New means for accessing the data will be highlighted, and some on-line demonstration will be included.

• 25 January – Sea Surface Temperature
• 27 January – Sea ice parameters
• 1 February – Climate Data Records

The webinars are also an opportunity for participants to ask questions, before or during the event. Users and potential users' feedback are leading OSI SAF development activities and updates.

The webinars are aimed at both existing users of the OSI SAF products and those who are not familiar with these products. They are free and open to all.

More details to come on the OSI SAF website

Supporting Marine EO Educators – Upcoming workshop

30 August to 17 September 2021 / online

IOC/OTGA, EUMETSAT and the Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) are running a training workshop: Supporting Marine EO Educators: Professional development, knowledge exchange, and networking workshop. Its purpose is to share knowledge, skills, resources, and code, to help attendees independently train others on available EO tools.

At the end of the course, learners will be able to:

• Teach the use of Copernicus Sentinel-3 and CMEMS data for marine applications, covering the use of sea surface temperature, altimetry, and ocean colour data, as well as downstream products and model outputs.
• Show others how to access the Copernicus Marine Data through online portals, APIs, and other methods.
• Explain the concepts of data quality (including basic principles of validation) and selection of appropriate products when helping students design workflows.
• Understand the use of the following tools in training – SNAP, Remote Sensing Digital Teaching Tool, Git, Python (and Jupyter notebooks), and cloud computing (WEkEO).
• Select and adapt existing resources and develop new resources for their own training activities.

The training will take place online from 30 August to 17 September 2021. It is aimed as a knowledge exchange between peers who have, or will have, training responsibilities. Register for the course, until 29 June.

Previous participant Marie Smith explains how useful the course is.

Keep an eye on the Eumetcal Programme announcements!

From November onward / online

Hurrah! A COMET instructional designer has joined the Eumetcal Programme.

In the next two-and-a-half years he will support our community trainers, and others who facilitate training, by building an Expert Centre. This Expert Centre will be a central place for training and continuous development of us trainers AND a place where you can find answers and tips-and-tricks on how to best create effective and active (online) learning activities and material for your people.

Soon the Eumetcal Programme will announce a train-the-trainer course in which you will learn everything you need to know on how to design effective online and blended courses. If you take part you will need to bring an actual course that you are working on because this course has many hands-on exercises (labs) for which you can use your own course material. In this way, you can immediately implement the ideas and principles from the course in your own work.

This train-the-trainer course will start in November, and it would be great if the community could fully benefit from this effort. After all, it is special that we, as the Eumetcal community, were able to acquire COMET expertise to support us in this area of our work.