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Climate Services Professional Development Series

Sub-Seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) IDSS Residence Training Next Offering: To Be Determined
Location: NWS Training Center

Introduction Agenda Logistics Prerequisites Contact Information

Introduction

The five-day course is a trainee-participatory course with heavy emphasis on exercises, labs, and discussions and practice sessions providing working knowledge and skills needed for Impact-based Decision Support Services at Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) time scales. The course prerequisites are distance learning modules that must be taken prior to the course. The residence course topics will include:
  1. Fundamentals of climate data, observations, forecast, and application products reviewed through Q&A with course instructors, drawing on materials covered in the prerequisites
    1. CPC forecast products including Week-2 Hazards and Temperature and Precipitation forecasts from Week-2 through Seasonal
    2. El NiƱo-Southern Oscillation monitoring and prediction
    3. Climate Change
    4. xmACIS, Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT), Climate at a Glance, NOAA PSL plotting tools
  2. Fundamentals of S2S communication
    1. Communication with core partners
    2. Public messaging
    3. Media Training
  3. Fundamentals of S2S IDSS
    1. Identification of core partners
    2. Relationship building
    3. Service delivery by sector and application
  4. Guided applications of climate products in realistic scenarios
    1. Climate data requests
    2. Basic forecast interpretative services
    3. Basic climate change impacts
  5. Independent completion of scenario exercises that become progressively more complex, with instructor feedback
    1. Integrate weather and climate
    2. Communicate weather extremes in a climate context
    3. Fold in climate change context and messaging where appropriate
    4. Respond to climate data requests as part of IDSS delivery

Expected specific outcomes

Each trainee, upon completion of the residence training, should be able to:
  • Clearly and correctly communicate the CPC outlooks for any time window at any location.
  • Following best practices, respond to media-like questions about climate, including climate outlooks, climate data, and climate change.
  • Apply climate tools and resources to create local climate studies and background information, either in advance/for reference or on the fly during events.
  • Identify and communicate climatological risks of extreme weather and water events and place an ongoing extreme event in a climatological context in the area of responsibility.
  • Select and communicate meteorological and climatological information to NWS core partners that a) is relevant to support their decision making and b) in the most effective format to facilitate core partner understanding.
Course Organizing Team:

NOAA team:
Marina Timofeyeva, NWS Climate Services Branch Chief
Stephen Baxter, NWS Climate Services Program Manager
Andrea Bair, NWS Western Region Climate Services Program Manager
Barb Mayes-Boustead, NWS Warning Decision Training Division
Chelsea Peters, NWS Sacremento
Shawn Rossi, NWS Hastings
Jenna Meyers, NWS Climate Services Branch
Jim Keeney, NWS Training Center