Oral Presentation Abstract for NOAA’s 2011 Satellite Direct Readout Conference, 4-8 April Miami, Florida

THE COMET^® PROGRAM: A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF SATELLITE METEOROLOGY TRAINING RESOURCES FOR THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE COMMUNITY

Timothy C. Spangler

UCAR/COMET^®, Boulder, Colorado USA

ABSTRACT

The COMET^® Program (http://www.comet.ucar.edu) receives funding from NOAA-NESDIS, the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), the GOES-R Program Office, and The European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) to support education and training efforts in the area of satellite meteorology. This partnership enables COMET to create training materials of broad global interest on geostationary and polar-orbiting remote sensing platforms and their data, products, and operational applications.

Over the last few years, COMET’s satellite training has primarily focused on the capabilities, applications, and relevance of both the current and future polar orbiting and geostationary systems to operational forecasters and other user communities. These materials and activities are discussed in a poster presentation entitled Satellite Meteorology Education Resources from COMET: What’s New? by Schreiber-Abshire et al.

This presentation will review plans for the future of satellite training at COMET including a look to GOES-R, where JPSS training might go in the next several years, new projects with EUMETSAT, International Efforts for Africa, and ways to integrate satellite training into a new initiative for the National Weather Service called “smart readiness training”.