The Pacific Desk is well underway
With Week 2 of Cohort 1 coming to an end, we are have made it halfway with 2 more weeks to go. Elifaleti Ene and Richard Gokrun have been working hard and actively engaged in discussions and conversations with the Pacific Desk.
We share with you highlights of the last two weeks!
View picture gallery here: Cohort 1 Weeks 1 & 2
Week 1
Topics: Introduction to thermodynamics; stability; sounding interpretation; convection; satellite interpretation; global circulation with attention to the tropical components of the patterns; and weather features unique to the tropics.
It’s back to the classroom for our trainees! This first week, they spend most of their time at the Desk with instruction in the mornings and hands-on activities (some with real-time weather conditions) in the afternoons. We concentrate on understanding what weather is happening, but also understanding why it is happening.
Week 2
Topics: Surface and upper-air analysis; drawing and interpreting streamline charts; understanding the vertical structure of the atmosphere and weather features; numerical weather prediction; verification and statistics; and real-time weather analysis; and forecasting.
Trainees spend some of this week in instruction and hands-on activities with new data sources and analysis techniques. We also start to put together all that we’ve learned so far: trainees spend the afternoons analyzing the current weather situation across the South Pacific and creating forecasts for their home country and other select locations. They also have the opportunity to attend the twice-weekly map and forecast discussion on the forecast floor, as well as spend some time with forecasters at the Honolulu Marine Forecast Desk and Satellite Analysis Desk.
What to expect in the coming weeks!
Weeks 3 & 4
Topics: Marine forecasting techniques, tsunamis, local weather analysis and forecasting.
Topics: Severe weather, communicating weather information to the public, tropical variability (e.g. ENSO, MJO), tropical cyclones, communication networks and systems, and webpage creation and maintenance.
