89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

Tuesday, 13 January 2009
International satellite training activities
Hall 5 (Phoenix Convention Center)
Bernadette H. Connell, CIRA/Colorado State Univ., Ft. Collins, CO; and M. Davison, A. Mostek, V. Castro, and T. Whittaker
Four years after the startup of a monthly virtual focus group in the Americas and the Caribbean, we reflect on progress. There is (still) work to do, but we are building capacity in many areas – topics as well as locations – in Central and South America and the Caribbean. We will provide an update on virtual monthly international satellite weather briefings which connect people from as many as 24 different countries, and enable them to view satellite imagery, share information on global, regional, and local weather patterns, hurricanes, severe weather, flooding, and even volcanic eruptions. We will also provide an overview of the collaborations that exist and continue to develop between CIRA, CIMSS, NOAA, and the World Meteorological Organization and its Regional Meteorological Training Centers in Costa Rica, Barbados, Brazil, and Argentina. These include structured classroom and virtual training, and how they have led to other activities such as local discussion groups and opened the door to transitioning products from research to operations.

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