1. Fourth Eumetcal Workshop is the largest so far

2. Weather Radar Applications in Nowcasting -application open!

3. Eumetcal to provide a central web conferencing service for courses, working groups

4. Cooperation with COMET, MSC getting official

5. Busy conference autumn ahead

6. Your articles needed

1. Fourth Eumetcal Workshop is the largest so far

The Eumetcal Workshop will begin in 12 days. This year we have a record number of participants and presenters coming together to discuss and share training experiences and ideas in an informal setting in beautiful Southern France.

The workshop is organised in the Météo-France conference centre at the Météopole in Toulouse. Altogether 60 participants will be present with a strong presence also from our cooperating institutions, WMO, ABoM, MSC, COMET and RSHU. We are looking forward to a fruitful and a memorable workshop and wish all of you who are coming to Toulouse a safe and pleasant journey!

For the information on the workshop, go to: http://www.eumetcal.org/Fourth-Eumetcal-Workshop-25-28

2. Weather Radar Applications in Nowcasting -application open!

This autumn Eumetcal will organise a course dedicated to Radar meteorology and nowcasting in cooperation with the DWD. Trainers for the course will from ABoM, DHZ, DLR, FMI, INMH and MSC. The course application is open and seats remain available. For a full description of the course content and application form, go to: http://www.eumetcal.org/courses/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=251

The course application deadline is 15 September 2008. The course will be a blended learning course with parts of the training delivered via the internet and parts in person in Langen, Germany.

3. Eumetcal to provide a central web conferencing service for courses, working groups

Eumetcal has used a web conferencing service to support blended learning courses with great success since January 2007. So far this tool has only been used in connection with the courses, but this spring the FMI has opened a tender competition for this service to be widely used by the Eumetcal III Programme.

This tool will support online meetings between working groups, steering group and of course, provide a fixed tool for the Eumetcal courses. A general license reduces the price per training session and lowers the bar for online training as a simple tool with proven functionality is in use in all Eumetcal activities.

4. Cooperation with COMET, MSC getting official

The first cooperating agreement was signed between Eumetcal and the ABoM Training Centre (BMTC) in November 2007 and the Meteorological Service Canada and Eumetcal are set to become cooperating partners very soon as well. In spring negotiations were also started with the COMET Program of the U.S. An agreement between COMET and Eumetcal will be drafted during autumn.

The newly agreed cooperation schemes strengthen the role of the Eumetcal Programme as the European training organisation in the field of meteorology and will in future provide more expertise to Eumetcal courses and working groups. In the end, the European weather forecaster will benefit from a broad pool of experts in all fields of meteorology. Cooperation between Eumetcal members is also crucial for the success of the programme as Eumetcal needs human resources to carry out its tasks successfully.

5. Busy conference autumn ahead

This year Eumetcal will be present at the EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite conference in Darmstadt, Germany from 8-12/9 and at the EMS/ECAC Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands from 29/9-3/10. The Eumetcal PM and TSO will also visit the Croatian and Italian national meteorological services for discussions and information about the programme.

If you think that your organisation would benefit from a Eumetcal information visit by the PM and TSO, please write to the Training Support Officer (contact info below) for more information.

6. Your articles needed

You will find again that this issue has not had input from you readers in terms of articles on your current and upcoming training related activities and news.

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Thank you for reading,

Jaakko Eumetcal Training Officer

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The next issue will come out in May 2008 and the deadline for articles for newsletter 02/08 is 26 April 2008. Email your articles to [email protected]