After completing the workshop, which alternates between theory and tutorials, each trainee is offered an opportunity to participate in capacity development of climate services in their own country. There, while working with national climate data, participants are further trained in homogenization, the calculation of climatic indices, and the spatial and impact assessment of climate change on drought.
The workshop was held in Toulouse, where most of the scientific departments of Météo-France have their offices, thus 30 of the workshop speakers were Météo-France experts, while the rest came from WMO and other research centres and universities.
The curricalum revolved around the following themes:
- Climate: variability, climate change, scenarios for the future, agronomy, hydrology, drought;
- Climate analysis tools: models, downscaling, re-analysis, indices, seasonal forecasts;
- Operational climatology: WMO and its programmes, missions and challenges of climate services, availability and data rescue, products, the future and interoperability;
- Statistical methods: homogenization, spatialization; and
- From sensor to product: metadata, data acquisition, data control, data generation and data fusion.
The French language session held in March gathered 17 meteorologists and climatologists from Benin, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Congo, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Haiti, Côte d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The sessions in 2012, 2013 and 2014 were held in English. In four years, the workshop has trained 67 people from 52 national, or similar, meteorological services, 20 from the least developed countries, 14 from landlocked developing countries and 5 from small island developing states.
