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

A compendium of the Capacity Development activities within the GAW Programme can be found here.

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
Schneefernerhaus station hosts GAWTEC
Zugspitze-Schneefernerhaus GAW Global station hosts GAWTEC.

 

 

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
Brewer intercomparison.
Brewer intercomparison campaign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.