Capacity Development at GAW
The GAW Capacity Development Program was developed in order to:
- Document past and ongoing capacity development efforts across the GAW sub-groups
- coordinate future activities across the relevant sub-groups
- establish best practices in the capacity development efforts
This has been done with the following activities, targeting outreach, training and education:
Station Personnel Training
- GAWTEC: The GAW Training and Education Center has offered intensive hands-on training for GAW station personnel
- These courses have covered a variety of GAW topics such as aerosols, UV radiation, reactive gases, greenhouse gases and data evaluation
- A webinar series in collaboration with the YESS Community was started in 2020
- Twinning by QA/SAC Switzerland and WCC-Empa
- Hands-on partnerships with selected GAW stations in data-sparse regions
- Teaching at training workshops in a variety of locations on a variety of topics
- General advice on technical matters of in-situ gas observations
- Training of system staff during system and performance audits
- See QA/SAC Switzerland and WCC-Empa for more information
Student Training
- Summer school on Solar Radiation Based Established Techniques for Atmospheric Observations (SORBETTO)
- This event was held for the first time in 2018, and again in 2020
- It offers education in ground-based and satellite solar radiation measurement techniques
- Summer school at Hyytiälä GAW station on atmospheric observations of aerosols, clouds, and trace gases for PhD and advanced MSc students
Instrument Calibration and Comparison Activities
- Dobson calibration activities
- Transferring instruments to data sparse regions for inter-comparison
- Training courses are also held for Dobson operators and technicians
- WMO-GAW Brewer Ozone Spectrophotometer Workshops and Operator Courses: a collaboration between EUBrewnet and WMO-GAW
- A collaborative opportunity for the community to share scientific and technical advancements related to Brewer operation, calibration, data processing and data management
- This is to build understanding of the progress, advancements, challenges, and needs of individual stations, users, and networks
- Provides advice and answers practical questions from the community, particularly for new operators, in aspects of Brewer operation, characterization, calibration and data submission
- JOSIE-SHADOZ Ozonesonde Campaign
- Held in 2017, it included lectures on sonde quality assurance, the importance of metadata reporting, troubleshooting and training of/knowledge-sharing between operators
- Served to update the Standard Operating Procedures
- WCCOS and QA/SAC on O3S often do individual consultations or coaching for O3S-stations as well
Modeling Training
- Contributed to training materials and best practices for Chemical Weather/Air Quality Forecasting
- Prediction and Forecasting Improvement for Africa (PREFIA)
- Aims to develop and improve air quality prediction and forecasting capabilities, as well as related meteorological analysis for African applications through an international science and training effort
- This involves model a inter-comparison exercise as well as an individual model and ensemble approach
- The first workshop was held in 2019
- Seamless Prediction of Air Pollution in Africa Workshops (SPAPA)
- Held in 2017 and 2019
- Collaboration between Monitoring, Analysis and Prediction of Air Quality (MAP-AQ) core group and GAW teams (SAG-GURME and SAG-Application)
- Main objective of these workshops was to establish several projects and a network of partners with complementary expertise to develop and implement a forecast and assessment system for air quality over Africa
The work from the GAW Capacity Development projects can be read about in
- Training Materials and Best Practices for Chemical Weather/Air Quality Forecasting
- WMO Bulletin Vol. 68(2): Sustainability of Atmospheric Observations in Developing Countries by Laj et al. (2019)
The WMO Global Campus has also been created as a searchable calendar of learning events for WMO Members, including the capacity development efforts of GAW.