During the recent years, the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre has significantly developed and supplemented activities aimed for the increase of capacity and competency of its staff in operational meteorology, hydrology and climatology. This would not have been possible without the valuable support of EUMETSAT, WMO and the Eumetcal project. Following an internal three-year Competency Management Program, monthly training activities have been carried out covering different aspects of remote sensing applications, use of NWP data for operational forecasting, research and analysis and forecasting methodologies. Contributions of internal trainers are frequently supplemented by input from external experts on field – for instance, representatives from EUMETSAT and ECMWF have kindly supported the delivery of specific learning activities, and also the wide range of training materials and online events organized by EUMeTrain have been of a great benefit to our specialists.
Thanks to the support of Eumetcal, a functional learning platform has been developed to support the internal training activities, and the possibility for our specialists to attend workshops and courses for the increase of their training skills and capacity – WMO course for Trainers in RA VI and Weather Simulator development workshop – has ensured an increased quality and effectiveness of training activities delivered to our staff. Thereby the obtained capacity of our experts has led to the possibility of LEGMC to contribute to external training events, supporting training activities delivered, organized and supported by EUMETSAT, Eumetcal, WMO and EUMeTrain – by participating in the Baltic+ course organizing committee, by hosting and contributing to the NOMEK course, and also by contributing to several training activities carried out in Europe, Asia and Africa.