The Baltic+ course is a joint initiative of the National Meteorological Services of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, running since 2015. Forecasters from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are also invited to participate. This year was the fifth course.
Each year one of the NMSs takes responsibility to organise the course, in cooperation with the other NMSs and EUMETSAT. This year it was organised by the Estonian Environmental Agency (ESTEA).
The course (comrpising three weeks online and three days in the classroom) is an annual refresher and meeting point for the forecasters. It gives them the opportunity to improve their competencies in operational meteorology and communication. The course leader Taimi Paljak from ESTEA said: “It has become more and more important to inform institutions and the public about what kind of impactsdifferent extreme weather situations can have. This is especially important when delivering warnings to the decisionmakers such as Rescue Services.”
The success of the past five years of Baltic+ courses has been possible thanks to the commitment of partner institutes. The training team is regularly meeting online or face to face to develop the course programme, which is crucial for keeping the course current and useful for forecasters.