Climate Services Professional Development Series

PCU 1: Know the Infrastructure for Climate Data and Services

PCU 2: Understand Climate Variability and Change and Apply to Local Services

PCU 3: Understand the Basis and Methodologies of CPC Products

PCU 4: Use NOAA Climate Products and Tools in Local Climate Services

PCU 5: Apply Climate Information to Decision Support, Partnership, and Communication

PCU 6: Understand Principles for Conducting Timely, Accurate, and Consistent Climate Data Observations and the Broad Range of Their Applications

Residence Training:

Operational Climate Services

Climate Variability

Advanced Climate Variability

Sub-Seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) IDSS

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:

Fundamentals of climate data, observations, forecast, and application products reviewed through Q&A with course instructors, drawing on materials covered in the prerequisites

CPC forecast products including Week-2 Hazards and Temperature and Precipitation forecasts from Week-2 through Seasonal
El Niño-Southern Oscillation monitoring and prediction
Climate Change
xmACIS, Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT), Climate at a Glance, NOAA PSL plotting tools

Fundamentals of S2S communication

Communication with core partners
Public messaging
Media Training

Fundamentals of S2S IDSS

Identification of core partners
Relationship building
Service delivery by sector and application

Guided applications of climate products in realistic scenarios

Climate data requests
Basic forecast interpretative services
Basic climate change impacts

Independent completion of scenario exercises that become progressively more complex, with instructor feedback

Integrate weather and climate
Communicate weather extremes in a climate context
Fold in climate change context and messaging where appropriate
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