NOMEK - Enhancing the skills of forecasters for the Nordic region

22-25 May 2023/ SMHI, Norrköping

The NOMEK (NOrdisk MEteorologisk Kompetensutveckling = Nordic Meteorological Competency Training) annual training event was attended by 26 forecasters from all the Nordic countries, as well as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, and the US Marine Core. The course was hosted by the Swedish Meteorological Hydrological Institute in Norrköping, Sweden.

This year’s objective was to strengthen the partnerships between the Nordic organisations, and to offer a venue to discuss how each institute works. This helps in understanding each other, and makes the cooperation better. Topics this year included severe convection forecasting challenges, impact-based warning systems, and exercises on radar, satellite and NWP.

Participants enjoyed building professional relationships with forecasters from other offices, and learning what forecasts they do and how they do them. The course was an opportunity to start conversations and learn from each other. A course participant summarised: “It is vital that the participants take an active part in the discussions and lectures, sharing their own experiences.”

Erik Höjgård-Olsen, course co-host with Paulina Hellgren, said: “We observed the Nordic interactions and exchanges of ideas. It would be very nice if we, in the future, could have more exchanges with the other institutes outside of the Nordic countries.”

EUMeTrain's Event Week on heatwaves and droughts 2023

29 May - 1 June 2023/ Online

Between 29 May to 1 June 2023, EUMeTrain organised an online event week on heatwaves and droughts. The presentations were grouped into seven sessions of 90 minutes each, comprising eight main topics covered by 18 presenters.

The presentations provided a comprehensive view on the physical processes associated with heatwaves, and their intensification by severe drought. Evapotranspiration, and its control under water-limited regimes, is considered as a key process regulating this intensification, and, therefore, there was also a strong emphasis on vegetation monitoring and impacts on carbon cycle and crop productivity. Other topics relevant to heatwaves included marine heatwaves, urban heat islands, and the impact of heat extremes on air quality.

All talks included extensive references to EUMETSAT datasets, particularly those from the LSA SAF, H SAF, OSI SAF and CM- SAF, and some references to Copernicus and NASA datasets were made. Some discussions about data accessibility were introduced in many of the talks, with particular emphasis on the Google Earth Engine and the EUMETSAT climate services. It ended with a final discussion and wrap-up.

In total, there were 207 participants throughout the event week, with initial registrations from 65 countries covering four continents — Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. There was an average of 80 participants per session.

Following the course, a survey was sent to participants, with 38 responses, corresponding to 18% of all participants. In this this sample, 60 % were researchers and 30% were forecasters. Other results show that for the majority there were no problems using the Webex online platform (84.2%) and the length of the week was just right (89.2%). For the participants responding to the survey, either the week met the expectations (77%) or, if not completely meeting the expectations, it was useful (23%).

You can find all the recordings and presentations of this event week on the EUMeTrain website.

International School on Applications with the Newest Multi-spectral Environmental Satellites – 2023

20-28 June 2023/ Ostia, Italy

The remote sensing summer school is a regular yearly course, that provides an in-depth explanation of methods and techniques used to extract information from environmental satellite data, with emphasis on the latest remote sensing technologies. This year’s summer school was organised in Ostia for the first time.

The course consisted of lectures, laboratory sessions — utilising McIDAS-V and Jupyter Notebooks, weather briefings, discussions and test. Twenty-two participants from 14 European countries attended, supported by five facilitators from EUMETSAT, CoMET (Italian Met Service) and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, US.

McIDAS-V software was installed locally on participants' computers and the data for the labs was provided on USB sticks. Additionally, on the last day two labs in Jupyter Notebooks were used, provided on the EUMETSAT Training hub, accessed from the participants’ computers. Participants showed great interest and big progress from the start to the end of school (ca. 40% better score was recorded in the final quiz compared to pre-course quiz).

MTG proxy data and RGBs (from GOES and polar satellite data) were used in several labs, and the first image RGBs were shown and discussed in a dedicated session.

EUMETSAT supported 5th ACAM training school

6-7 June 2023/ Dhaka, Bangladesh

The 5th Atmospheric Composition and the Asian Monsoon (ACAM) training school took place from 6-7 June 2023, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, ahead of the 5th ACAM workshop. The focus of the training school was using satellite observations and modelling of atmospheric chemistry and aerosols in the Asian monsoon region, for research and application.

The training school was organised and sponsored by IGAC, SPARC, NCAR ACOM, the Environmental Defense Fund, NASA, ICIMOD and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP). EUMETSAT supported the training school with a scientific lecture, and the coordination and preparation of the practical training content.

The training school aimed to make participants aware of satellite and model-based products, and to learn how to access and work with the data. During the two-day training, 25 participants were engaged in a mixture of scientific lectures, practical training, and individual project work.

Jupyter notebooks, developed for the ACAM training school, are available.

Train the Trainers Course – Personal experience

ONLINE

Zsofia Kocsis attended this year's Train the Trainer course and had the following experience to share:

"I attended EUMETCAL’s Online Train the Trainers Course this year. The course started with an instruction session, where we all had the opportunity to get to know the instructors and all the participants, as well as the tools we were using at the course. I found this a very nice touch, as later the participants were interacting with each other and knowing each other really eased discussion among us. During the training, we were working on materials for our own courses. We not only learned how to develop engaging exercises, but we were also introduced to educational science, which showed us how training can be made more engaging, effective and useful for our learners. I found all the new techniques and methods fascinating. It basically changed my view on learning and training. Instead of developing lectures in the traditional way, I started to use all the ‘tips and tricks’ I learned during the course to provide a much better training experience for my learners. I can highly recommend this course to anyone who would like to create engaging and successful trainings."

How to provide a course in a different way?

ONLINE

Zsofia Kocsis attended this year's Train the Trainer course and had the following experience to share:

For our last internal refreshment course on basic satellite meteorology for forecasters, we focused on creating a more engaging and effective course for our forecasters, such as using the method ‘learning by doing’. We wanted to put our forecasters into an environment close to their operational environment, with exercises close to their daily work. By doing so, we can increase the likelihood our learners will use the new knowledge in their work.

The course was carried out in small groups, three to six forecasters in the four hour training with one instructor. We started with a short repetition of the basics, such as what the satellites measure, orbit types, etc. In this part, pooling questions were used to engage the participants. For the rest of the course, forecasters worked in pairs, using the workstation used operationally, to solve exercises focusing on different topics, such as convection, fog detection and analysing the synoptic situation. They had to find answers by looking at the images and data. They were provided quick guides for imagery and the instructor was available to provide hints and help. After each exercise, we discussed the answers.

Short booster questions were also sent to the participants, which was very much appreciated. Feedback from the forecasters was very positive; some said “all training should be like this”.