Using Research-to-Operations Evaluation Results to Create an Innovative National Weather Service Training Experience

In March and April 2016, the National Weather Service (NWS) Operations Proving Ground (OPG) executed an Operational Readiness Evaluation (ORE) where NWS forecasters were asked to interrogate satellite imagery from the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s Himawari-8 (H-8) Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) and provide feedback on its usefulness for various analysis tasks. The H-8 imagery was used as a proxy for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R), since fifteen of the sixteen H-8 spectral bands are identical to those available from the Advanced Baseline Imager on board the GOES-R satellite. The ORE was conducted by ingesting historical H-8 AHI datasets, surface observations, and National Centers for Environmental Prediction Global Forecast System model output in “displaced real time” into the OPG’s Advanced Weather Information Processing System workstations. The results from the OPG evaluation were used as the foundation for a 2-h applications lab during the GOES-R Prep Course; a mandatory training experience for NWS Science and Operations Officers (SOOs) and Developmental Operational Hydrologists (DOHs). In this facilitator guided applications lab, SOOs and DOHs analyzed H-8 imagery and Red-Green-Blue Composites for practical forecaster decision making. The feedback from the SOOs that attended the OPG applications lab was overwhelmingly positive with many asking how the interactive approach of teaching concepts through guided facilitation could extend to NWS forecasters at their Weather Forecast Offices (WFO). In addition to showing how research-to-operations results were used to build the applications lab during the GOES-R Prep Course, this presentation will introduce a new innovative training approach where multiple remote NWS forecasters can be guided through an interactive learning experience hosted on the same decision-making platform they use in operations. This is accomplished through the use of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System ThinClient on a WFO’s Decision Support Services laptop that is connected to the OPG server.