New and Updated Satellite Meteorology Education Resources from COMET

The COMET® Program (www.comet.ucar.edu) receives funding from NOAA NESDIS as well as EUMETSAT and the Meteorological Service of Canada to support education and training in satellite meteorology. These partnerships enable COMET to create educational materials of global interest on polar-orbiting and geostationary remote sensing platforms.

Over the last several years, COMET's satellite education programs have focused on the capabilities and applications of current and next-generation operational polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites and their relevance to operational forecasters and other user communities. By partnering with experts from the Naval Research Laboratory, NOAA-NESDIS and its Cooperative Institutes, Meteorological Service of Canada, EUMETSAT, and other user communities, COMET stimulates greater use of current and future satellite data observations and products.

This presentation provides an overview of COMET's recent satellite education efforts. COMET has a new module on Suomi NPP and an updated module on the VIIRS instrument. Additionally, COMET continues to prepare users for GOES-R with a module on the ABI instrument and the improvements that it will bring to forecasting, numerical weather prediction, and environmental monitoring.

Other recently published modules are more topical and present conceptual and operational information on atmospheric dust, atmospheric rivers, atmospheric composition, and nighttime visible imaging. Several earlier modules have been updated. These include Remote Sensing Using Satellites, an introduction for middle and high school students and the general public; and An Overview of Microwave Remote Sensing, 2nd Edition. COMET has co-produced several modules on weather forecasting in Africa. These cover flooding in West Africa; drought in East Africa; and the use of satellite precipitation products in hydrological management. In addition, COMET has expanded its suite of distance learning courses to cover microwave remote sensing and multispectral satellite applications.

Over 50 satellite-focused self-paced online materials are freely available via the Satellite Topic area of the MetEd Web site (www.meted.ucar.edu/topics/modules/satellite) and COMET's Environmental Satellite Resource Center (ESRC) Web site (www.meted.ucar.edu/esrc). The ESRC is a searchable, database-driven Web site that provides access to 600 education, training, and informational resources on Earth-observing satellites. The ESRC is now available outside COMET's registration system to enable even easier access.