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Inside this edition
Here We Come A-conferencing
That chill in the air and the hustle and bustle of holiday plans can only mean one thing for the Earth System Science (ESS) community – conference season is back!
COMET will be attending and presenting at AGU25 (American Geophysical Union) and the American Meteorological Society annual meeting (AMS26) this winter. Attending? Here are the details on how to connect with us.
AGU25
Presentations
Wednesday, December 17
8:30 – 10:00am CT, Paul Kucera: Utilizing Precipitation Datasets and Quantifying Associated Uncertainties in Hydrometeorological and Climate Impact Applications I Oral
8:50 – 9:00am CT, Daniella Alaso and Paul Kucera: Moving Forward Together: Co-production of Tailored Heat Advisories in Kenya - a Case Study of Kakuma Refugee Camp
9:40 – 9:50am CT, Rebecca Zieber and Paul Kucera: Evaluation of Low-Cost 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Stations (3D-PAWS) for Operational Use
9:50 – 10:00am CT, Chris Funk and Paul Kucera: Translating AI-enhanced forecasts and automatic weather station observations into trusted, accurate, and actionable predictions of rainy season onsets in KenyaCost 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Stations (3D-PAWS) for Operational Use
Posters
Wednesday, December 17, 2:15 – 5:45pm CT
Booth Schedule
Location: UCAR Community Programs Booth Science Showcase, Booth #103
Monday, December 15, 3 – 4:30pm CT
Tuesday, December 16, 10am – 3pm CT
Wednesday, December 17, 3 – 6pm CT
2026 AMS Annual Meeting
Presentations & Panels
Monday, January 26, 2026
10:45am – 12pm CT, Elizabeth Mulvihill (co-chair): Panel Discussion - The Great Pivot: Career Reinvention in a Changing World
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
4:30 – 4:45pm CT, Andrea Smith: Developing Students Using COMET Classroom Scenarios for Careers in the Weather, Water and Climate Industry
Thursday, January 29, 2026
11:00 – 11:15am CT, Kathryn Payne: Evaluation of a Low-Cost, 3D-Printed Air Quality Sensor as an Addition to the 3D-PAWS Suite of Instruments
11:30 – 11:45am CT, Jack Marek Halberstadt: Comparing IMERG and 3D-PAWS Rainfall Measurements in Kenya: Evaluating the Strengths and Limitations of Satellite-Derived Estimates
2:15 – 2:30pm CT, Amy Stevermer and Patrick Dills: Advancing Environmental Satellite Product Use for Forecasting and Decision Support Applications
Feature: Celebrating 35 Years of Building Expertise, Together
The National Weather Service and UCAR established the COMET Program in 1989 as a five-year project to support the Modernization and Associated Restructuring initiative. 35 years later, we’re still shaping education, training, and capacity building across the Earth System Sciences thanks to the support of our sponsors, partners, and learners. . . read more.
Support COMET MetEd
COMET MetEd’s educational and training resources have served the ESS community since 1997.
Free to learn. Not free to maintain.
MetEd has been a cornerstone of the COMET Program and the Earth System Science education and training world since 1997. Our 1,000+ courses and resources provide researchers, professionals, students, and more with renowned learning experiences—currently at no cost to our learners.
While our sponsors support the development of our courses, the cost of maintaining free access to these resources continues to grow. We are exploring new ways to continue to fund MetEd. Now more than ever, we need your help. Your one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation of $10 or more will help keep MetEd accessible to all.
This holiday season, please reflect on the value that MetEd has brought to your learning and help us continue to extend that opportunity to others across the U.S. and around the world.
Become a COMET MetEd Sponsor!
The Friends of the National Center and COMET are thrilled to announce the expansion of COMET MetEd Sponsorship opportunities! Your organization can demonstrate its commitment to advancing Earth system science education while reaching a highly engaged audience of students, professionals, and enthusiasts as a MetEd sponsor.
Sponsorship starts at $5,000 and includes sponsor recognition perks and more. Learn more about the MetEd sponsorship opportunity here.
New COMET MetEd Courses
Here are the latest COMET MetEd courses and resources from this quarter.
Elevate your analysis and forecasting capabilities in challenging high-latitude and polar regions with this rapid, focused training on how the Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), aboard JPSS polar-orbiting satellites (S-NPP, NOAA-20, -21), effectively fills the crucial void left by limited geostationary views. Brought to you by NOAA JPSS.
Apply your scientific skills alongside workplace power skills as you grapple with decision-making, time constraints, and communication to employers and stakeholders in this course designed to help prepare students for private sector employment in the Weather, Water, and Climate enterprise. Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 22377520.
Develop your understanding of physical meanings of several commonly used polarimetric radar variables, including differential reflectivity, correlation coefficient, differential phase, specific differential phase, and linear depolarization, in this course on the basic principles of dual-pol weather radar. Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2303654.
Hone your science and media literacy skills in this course by evaluating social media posts and news headlines about severe weather storms. This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to everyday applications of scientific thinking and does not require a background in meteorology. Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF Award #1945286).
Apply the 10 steps of the Dvorak technique to obtain a reliable estimate of a tropical cyclone’s intensity as you work through a simple real-world case study with various types of satellite imagery while being guided by an expert from the National Hurricane Center. Brought to you by NOAA.
Learn how to create a thunderstorm by setting just the right combinations of humidity, surface temperature, and upper-tropospheric temperature ingredients needed for a severe storm to develop in this interactive course. Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF Award 1945286).
Understand the benefits, limitations, and caveats of the NOAA/NESDIS Snowfall Rate (SFR) Product and its Conterminous US (CONUS) counterpart Merged Snowfall Rate (mSFR) Product to help fill radar imagery data gaps for data-sparse regions in this lesson. Brought to you by NOAA.
Sign up for your free COMET MetEd account for access to 1,000 courses and educational resources across the Earth System Sciences. Happy learning!
COMET News
Image credit: NOAA
COMET launches a Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS) demonstration project in the Dominican Republic. The COMET team met with the Instituto Dominicano de Meteorologia Director Gloria Ceballos and Deputy Director Miguel Campusano in the Dominican Republic to launch our first Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS) demonstration project in partnership with the National Hurricane Center. Our team is deploying our 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Station (3D-PAWS), 3D-PAWS rain gauge, stream gauges, stream gauge, and a storm surge gauge network in the Dominican Republic to monitor weather conditions and its impacts. This study is the first step in developing an end-to-end early warning system to improve early warning for weather hazards in the Caribbean.
COMET collaborates on EUMETCAL hackathons. COMET Educational Designer Tsvet Ross-Lazarov represented COMET at the EUMETCAL Radar hackathon, hosted by The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, to build new training for an advanced radar course with radar experts, meteorologists, and instructional designers across Europe. A week later, Tsvet traveled to Germany for the EUMETCAL Advanced Satellite Hackathon to build an advanced satellite course. The final lessons from both hackathons will be posted on the EUMETCAL website.
COMET Expands 3D-PAWS in Turks and Caicos. Our team recently led a week-long training with the Turks and Caicos Islands National Weather Service (TCINWS) team in collaboration with the Department of Disaster Management & Emergencies (DDME). During this training, the teams successfully 3D-printed, assembled, and installed a storm surge sensor at the South Dock port. These storm surge sensors play a critical role in enhancing the Turks and Caicos Islands’ early warning capabilities—especially for hazards such as high seas, high surf, coastal flooding, and storm surge.
COMET welcomes the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) to Boulder, CO. COMET scientists and instructors led the annual weather analysis course for the KMA in Boulder, CO, this November. Participants learned a variety of different topics covering satellite analysis, numerical weather prediction, and frozen precipitation type forecasting—just to name a few. We also featured special guest instructors, including Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere staff, National Weather Service Science and Operations Officers, NSF NCAR Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) scientists, and a CU Boulder Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) professor.
COMET conducts independent field study of 3D-PAWS in Türkiye. COMET recently completed a 3D-PAWS Data Workshop with the Türkiye State Meteorological Service (TSMS) in Ankara, Türkiye. Our team compared evaluation results of a two-year field study of 3D-PAWS systems that were co-located with TSMS reference stations in three separate climate regions. The independent studies showed similar evaluation results for most of the 3D-PAWS sensors over the two-year study period. The next step is to finalize the results, prepare the final report, and submit the report to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as a technical report publication. TSMS's goal is to submit the report to WMO by May 2026.
COMET interns’ projects help facilitate our research. Our undergraduate interns from CU-Boulder, Molly Dever and Reece Coleman, completed their semester-long projects for COMET. Reece worked on writing Python code to perform analysis on data from an EOL lab calibration of 3D-PAWS pressure, temperature, and humidity sensors. Molly worked on GIS mapping of 3D-PAWS stations and built an interactive GIS tool to identify areas of strong cell phone coverage in countries worldwide — a key consideration when siting 3D-PAWS.
Community Events
Credit: Girls Who Chase
Registration is Open for the Girls Who Chase Special Workshop Series: All Things Radar
The All Things Radar: Severe Weather specialty workshop, offered by Girls Who Chase and COMET, will include interactive in-depth sessions, case studies, and tech tips for all experience levels on key radar products to prepare for and chase severe weather.
Sessions will introduce how to effectively use radar and radar products, with a focus on the particular products most impactful for storm chasing. An interactive case study will detail the use of high-resolution mobile radar data to make similar assessments that can augment field research and storm chasing. An additional short session will cover tips and tricks to get the most out of your phone or desktop radar applications.
Register for the workshop here.
Contact Us
Do you have any questions or feedback for the newsletter? Reach out to [email protected]. For questions or comments regarding the COMET Program or MetEd, please contact [email protected].