World map showing the countries that participated in the fourth session.

The training week consisted of eight online sessions dealing with the detection, nowcasting and forecasting of dust clouds using geostationary and polar orbiting satellite data.

The lectures were offered by Thomas Lee (NRL, USA), Hérve Le Gléau (Meteo France), Humaid Albadi (Oman), Carlos Perez (NASA-GISS and IRI, USA), Nuno Moreira (Portugal), and Jose Prieto, HansPeter Roesli and Jochen Kerkmann (EUMETSAT).

During this training event week, over 130 participants from 34 different institutes in 25 countries attended the online sessions and contributed actively to the discussions.

The general feeling of the participants was expressed very clearly by Tom Lee (NRL, USA). In his lecture he emphasised that our capabilities for forecasting dust have greatly improved in recent years, thanks to the new RGB products and the wealth of related training resources.

Screenshot from the sixth session when an actual dust storm was discussed.

The training software used for these online sessions enabled free and easy access for the registered participants. All the sessions were recorded and will shortly be made available for download on the EUMETSAT website.

Two further dust-related modules are available at EumeTrain (Detection of dust with MSG) and COMET (Forecasting Dust Storms). Similarly, a large (and growing) collection of training materials is freely available for download on EUMETSAT's Online Training Library. For training event dates, please consult our Online Training Schedule.

Useful real-time imagery, case studies and topical images may be found in our Image Gallery pages.

Back | Features