Satellite Meteorology Education & Training Resources from COMET
Abstract
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 geostationary and polar-orbiting remote sensing platforms. These materials focus on the capabilities and applications of current and next-generation 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 satellite data observations and products. This presentation provides an overview of COMET's recent satellite education efforts in the area of polar orbiting satellites. COMET has a new module on Suomi NPP, which describes the satellite system and discusses the improvements that it is bringing to forecasting, numerical weather prediction, and environmental monitoring. COMET has also published an updated version of its module on the VIIRS instrument. "Imaging with VIIRS: A Convergence of Technologies and Experience, 2nd Edition" covers the instrument's enhanced capabilities by examining the systems that contributed to its development. Special attention is paid to the Day/Night Visible channel as VIIRS is the first instrument on a civilian satellite to image atmospheric and terrestrial features with and without moonlight. An upcoming module will exclusively focus on nighttime imaging with the VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB). "Applications of the VIIRS Day-Night Band" will introduce the capabilities of DNB imagery to a wide audience ranging from forecasters and emergency managers to wildfire fighters and oceanographers. DNB products will be compared to traditional satellite products made from infrared data, including the "fog" product. Users will learn how DNB products can be used for observing clouds and monitoring such features as tropical cyclones, fog/stratus, and dust storms. Other recent modules on atmospheric dust, atmospheric rivers, and atmospheric composition contain information on how polar orbiters help with their detection and monitoring. In addition, COMET has several new distance learning courses that contain information on polar orbiters. 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 easy access.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.A33M0325A
- Keywords:
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- 0800 EDUCATION;
- 3300 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 6969 RADIO SCIENCE / Remote sensing