Forecasting and nowcasting thunderstorms and their severe weather are very challenging. This state of the art course, with its world class international lecturers, is based on systematic forecasting approaches that combine the latest scientific research with integrated use of satellite, radar, observations, lightning data and numerical weather prediction guidance. The course will be highly interactive with lectures, group discussions and activities and hands-on computer based case studies.

The course will cater for European forecasters (but not only). Candidates must be forecasters who are responsible for issuing warnings. Preference will be given to forecasters from emerging European countries with operational radars who will also be attending the ERAD 2010 conference. As the workshop will be highly interactive and conducted in English, applicants must have good spoken English language skills.

The workshop will include:
o The pre-storm environment and storm initiation, the roles of local flows and orography in Europe
o The mature storm and associated weather
o Nowcasting process, principles and practices
o Tools and products for integrated diagnosis and prediction
o European groups and approaches
o Severe storm case studies

Atlass Hall, Ramada

EUMETSAT and WMO will support the participation of a limited number of forecasters from Central and Eastern Europe based on criteria established by the course - PC.

II. ERAD2010 - Master classes for students and young scientists

A Master class is an occasion for students or young scientists to receive professional advice from experts or professors.

How?
Example 1: Topics on request: Student X would like advice from expert Y about topic Z. X sends an e-mail to info@erad2010.org specifying Z and Y. The organizers of ERAD2010 will contact Y and see if is available. In the end, the organizers will have a list with proposed topics and available experts. A time table with Ys and Zs will be published on the site. If there are other students willing to assist one specific topic, they can check if there is room enough to assist.

Example 2: Topics offered: Professor or expert Y offers a seminar on topic Z. Organizers of ERAD2010 will post a list with all these offered topics and will receive applications from students willing to participate.
Examples 1 and 2 are ways to meet students and young scientists need to improve their research. Coordination and time tables will be arranged before the conference, but there will be flexibility to harmonize with the general schedule of the conference.

Where?
There will be a dedicated hall (classroom) with desks and chairs, internet access, video projector, flip charts, situated at 5 minutes walk of the conference hall, in a 4 stars hotel. The hall can be arranged to support two, three or four simultaneous Master classes, depending on the number of people willing to assist.

Short Course on Dual-Polarization and Doppler Weather Radar : Fundamentals and Applications

4-5 September 2010

Prof. V.Chandrasekar, Colorado State University, USA
Prof. Dmitri Moisseev, University of Helsinki, Finland

Niels Einar Jensen and invited lectures

Introductory course to Local Area Weather Radar, an instrument for high resolution rainfall measurements

The Local Area Weather Radar one-day course is an introduction to a cost efficient X-band weather radar system specially developed for high resolution rainfall measurements.

The course aims to provide the attendee with knowledge of how the LAWR hardware is configured and requirements for installation. The attendee will be presented with the signal processing methods and the LAWR calibration method along with associated uncertainties will be explained. Operational examples of methods will be presented. With attendees from many different institutions, you will have the opportunity to exchange ideas and best practices. The course will be conducted by the developers of the LAWR system, and you will therefore have plenty of opportunity to enquire about specific needs in connection with our research/project.

Date: Sunday 5 September from 10 AM to 4.30 PM, prior to ERAD2010, Ramada, Gamma Hall,

Participants: Anyone considering using radar rainfall data as supplement to rain gauge data

Cost: Free

Registration: send an e-mail to Lisbeth Pedersen, DHI,

lpe@dhigroup.com subject: ERAD LAWR Course, with your name and affiliation.

Deadline for registration is Friday 27 August 2010.

Short Course on QPE, QPF and Hydrological Applications for students and experts

Applications and more info at

radarcourse2010-registration@crahi.upc.edu

RADMON Agenda

Unique technical workshop on the inner workings of a weather radar !

Concept: RADAR MONITORING - A workshop on data products and methods that can be used to diagnose radar hardware/configuration issues.
Participants: Operational radar managers, maintainers, developers, support people, network designers.

Description:
Engineers and technicians set up radars. Meteorologists use products (imagery) to produce their forecasts and nowcasts. In between, are product developers and radar data analysts who are experts in processing the radar data. They have insights into the quality of the radar data, have access and process voluminous amounts of data. They have to design and process the data to produce products that overcome various radar issues. Therefore, they have to diagnose issues in radar hardware itself - either on a short term or long term basis.

The question arises, “what radar products or analyses techniques could be designed to help support and maintain the radar hardware, the radar network or its configuration”.

The intent of this workshop is to address this question and to open up the Pandora's Box of related questions and issues - such as, what to do when you find a long problem in the radar, fix it at the radar or in the software. It is expected that there are various techniques that people have already developed but have not had the opportunity to present openly.

Presentations to demonstrate techniques will be invited but submissions will also be considered (please email paul.joe@ec.gc.ca). A panel discussion including radar network managers is planned. The final agenda will be established by late July.

Expected topics include:

• What products can be used to evaluate the siting of a single radar?
• What products can be used to monitor the power calibration?
• What products can be used to monitor the power calibration of a radar network?
• Monitoring Noise with Data Techniques
• How do you know that the radar is pointing accurately?
• Diagnosing Antenna Levelness using the Sun and the Echo Top Product
• Diagnosing Antenna Servo issue
• Tx/Rx Failures
• Diagnosing Signal Processing filtering issues
• Antenna Beam patterns

Date: Sunday 5 September, Betta Hall, Ramada

Cost: 50 euros, including lunch and coffee breaks