MeteoForum: A Brazilian Connection

Elen Cutrim
http://www.wmich.edu/

Two decades ago as the result of an agreement between the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Brazilian Government, the Universidade Federal do Pará Meteorology Department received recognition as a WMO Regional Meteorological Training Center (RMTC). Dr. Ricardo Souza was its first director, and when I became Meteorology Department chair in March a couple of years later, I assumed the responsibility of Director of the RMTC. During my tenure as director, the Belém RMTC hosted a post-graduate Specialization Course in Tropical Meteorology for meteorologists as well as a WMO Education meeting attended by Mr. Obassi, WMO Secretary-General and members of the WMO Education Directory.

My interest in MeteoForum stems, in large measure, from this experience which provided me with an overview and an in-depth understanding of difficulties encountered by RMTCs in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America as they train operational meteorologists without access to essential technological resources. Teaching at Western Michigan University has provided further insight into training meteorologists. In the first case, realtime data to use in teaching is more often than not missing from the available training resources while in the latter situation such data are readily available.

As an active member of the Unidata community Unidata's role in the MeteoForum effort, that of providing access to real-time data for RMTCs, piqued my interest, and I am working with Unidata and COMET to facilitate data provision to the RMTCs.

The group photo of the founders was taken during the 25th anniversary celebration of the Meteorology Department at the Universidade Federal do Para (UFPA), in December 2001. From left to right: Dr. Luis Molion, Prof. Antonio Gomes, Drs. Elen Cutrim, Ricardo Souza, Midori Makino, and Prof. Dimitrie Nechet.