COMET's MetEd Learning Resources for GOES-R+ and JPSS User Readiness

The COMET® Program (www.comet.ucar.edu), a part of the UCAR Community Programs (UCP), is funded by NOAA NESDIS as well as EUMETSAT and the Meteorological Service of Canada to develop and deliver education and training in satellite meteorology. Many of COMET’s satellite educational activities focus on developing web-based materials that highlight the capabilities and applications of current and next-generation geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites. These self-paced online lessons are freely available via the MetEd website (meted.ucar.edu) to help learners prepare for and exploit satellite advancements, and to demonstrate the relevance of new products to operational forecasters and other user communities. Over 100 satellite-focused, self-paced, online lessons are accessible via the direct topic link http://www.meted.ucar.edu/topics/satellite. Many of these lessons are also available in Spanish, French and other languages, making learning resources more accessible to a larger international audience.

This presentation will highlight educational offerings directly applicable to preparing users for the capabilities of the S-NPP and JPSS satellite series as well as the newly operational GOES-R+ (-16 and -17) satellites. For JPSS, this includes the JPSS Satellites: Capabilities and Applications distance learning course available on MetEd, several COMET produced lessons for the National Weather Service’s Satellite Foundation Course for JPSS (SatFC-J) introducing instrument capabilities and applications, and a lesson introducing the Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP). For GOES-16, activities include: updates to and multilingual translations of existing lessons for the National Weather Service’s Satellite Foundational Course for GOES-R+ (SatFC-G), a EUMETSAT funded lesson on Rapid Scan Applications and Benefits, and case-based exercises exploring operational uses of GOES-R GLM lightning observations in North and South America. For highlighting combined GEO and LEO applications, COMET has produced an interactive lesson that demonstrates the benefits of monitoring floodwater using both GOES-R and JPSS observations in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. All consumers of environmental satellite observations and products can exploit MetEd’s GOES and JPSS learning resources to gain exposure to the improvements these technologies bring to decision support, short-term forecasting, numerical weather prediction, and environmental monitoring.

The presentation will conclude with an overview of additional satellite educational activities including ongoing and future work.