This presentation will describe two short (3-week) courses that have been offered to national meteorological service and university staff in Latin America as part of the PACS-SONET project in climate monitoring. More than 50 participants from 5 countries attended the first course, in La Paz, Bolivia in December 2000. The second course, in Panama City, Panama in July 2001 brought together more than 50 participants from 13 countries.

Although the primary objective of these courses has been to stimulate interest in sustaining the routine pilot balloon observations that form the PACS-SONET network, many topics have been covered. While emphasis has been placed on high resolution satellite imagery interpretation, mesoscale climatology, and tropical meteorological concepts directly applicable to the forecast office environment, less conventional topics have been covered. Lectures have discussed the essential aspects involved in the design of meteorological services, including problems commonly encountered with meteorological services in developing countries. Class projects have given the participants the opportunity to design their own meteorological service, given the initial and operational costs of observing systems. Perhaps the most novel aspect of these courses has been to have the class carry out a field program to measure a mesoscale circulation of local interest. These 3-day (round the clock) field activities using a network of pilot balloon theodolites and other instruments provided many of the students with their first exposure to actually participating in a meteorological research program. These observations were then analyzed and presented to the class on the last day. It appears that this component of the course was highly motivational for the participants.