The NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) and the NASA Earth Sciences Division are pleased to announce a Satellite Meteorology Summer School on the theory and use of Satellite Data to engage graduate students and individuals with early postdoctoral appointments in the science of developing and using satellite data for the atmosphere, land, oceans, and cryosphere. The program will include internationally recognized experts in radiative transfer theory, satellite meteorology, numerical weather prediction at both the global scale and mesoscale, along with opportunities for students to interact with the lecturers in an informal setting. The objective of the program is to foster the education of the next generation of satellite meteorologists and promote the use of observations from the latest operational and research satellite missions.

Unidata's AMS booth

This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting, was held January 6-10 in Phoenix, Arizona. While we missed interacting with those in our community who could not attend due to the shutdown of the Federal government, we were happy to see many others participating in the meeting and at our booth in the exhibit hall. As always, we were also glad to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.

With so much going on at the conference, we can't cover everything here. Instead, we present some highlights as recalled by UPC staff members who attended.

MetPy 0.10.0 has been released. New features of the 0.10 series include simplified plotting, unit support in xarray selection, and updates for several calculations. For full release notes see the GitHub Release Page.

Members of the Unidata Program Center staff will be attending the 99th annual American Meteorology Society meeting, 6-10 January 2019 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Unidata will be in Booth 416 in the exhibit hall; feel free to stop by to talk with us. The booth will feature live, hands-on demonstrations of Unidata software and services, including a look at the current state of the AWIPS, IDV, MetPy, and THREDDS Data Server packages. Come and talk with the developers about what's coming up and what you'd like to see.

Read on for a schedule that lists selected sessions at which Unidata staff (and summer interns) will be presenting or attending. Unidata will also be at table C-8 at the Student Conference Career Fair, on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

A map discussion with visuals courtesy of Python.

The meteorology curriculum at Valparaiso University (VU) is continuously evolving as new technology arises, and this includes Python. Python is becoming a staple in many VU meteorology courses, where an ever-increasing number of packages and libraries are in use. Adding a new programming language to the educational mix can create a steep learning curve for college students who lack a programming background, but we feel that an early introduction to Python helps to prepare students for immersion into the job market or further education in graduate school.