The Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training (COMET) Case Study Library continues to expand to include a greater variety of cases covering a wider range of geographic locations. This project is funded by the National Weather Service (NWS) Office of Meteorology and is a collaborative venture between the NWS, COMET, Unidata, and the Joint Office for Science Support (JOSS). The most recent cases come from COMET training activities including classroom courses, distance learning, and teletraining. The goal is to make these training activities available to as broad an audience as possible, especially allowing participants in the training activities to examine the cases in greater detail at their offices and to share the information with their colleagues. In addition, these cases and the accompanying lab exercises can be used in university courses to give students a feel for the types of forecasting problems operational meteorologists deal with on a daily basis.
The case study data is available for download from the CODIAC system. To further enhance the case studies’ effectiveness, COMET instructors and subject matter experts have developed lab exercises that supplement the case data via the Web. The experts’ familiarity with the case data allows the highlights and major features of the case to be brought out in the exercises. For meteorologists who have developed other training materials based on the case studies, a Web-based form is available to modify these materials so that they can be made available on the Website for the meteorological community at large.
Future case studies are planned and are selected with input from both the operational
and university communities. Additional lab exercises have been added to existing cases to
help expand their use in the meteorological community.