This paper describes the approach and the process used for the development of TOPaCS, a contribution of RTC Italy to the WMO Global Campus initiative for ongoing continuous professional development in Meteorological and Climate Services. TOPaCS is open access and created under a Creative Commons licence, facilitating knowledge sharing and dissemination. TOPaCS is now available to the community of Climate Services through the platform www.climateservices.it.

Derechos are widespread, convectively induced severe wind events. A climatology of derechos in Germany is presented. It shows that derechos are not uncommon across the country. Two seasonal peaks indicate a comparable derecho risk in summer and winter. At the same time, we found two different derecho types, a warm- and a cold-season type. We present characteristics of both derecho types that can help forecasters to estimate the potential derecho threat in a given weather situation.

Recently, WMO and its Regional Training Centers engaged sustaining member Countries in developing Climate Services. Given its large spatio-temporal variability, Mediterranean is one of the most interseting regions for the application of Seasonal Forecasts. This paper presents a new educational approach, based on a blend of presencial and distance learning, culminated in the development of a course package where lerners can design their own learning path and that can be adapted to other regions.

This paper examines an event in May 2016 when smoke from forest fires in Canada reached the UK at altitudes between 3 and 11 km above the surface. Although events of this kind are fairly common in the summer months, this one was unusual because it persisted for 9 days due to a stationary flow pattern that kept the smoky air from travelling away to the east. A network of lidars and ceilometers around the UK provided round-the-clock observations of the smoke event.

There is a limited knowledge on impacts of Climate Services in Africa. This paper analyses the impacts that agrometeorological services have for smallholder farmers in a typical rainfed staple crop production system of West Africa. The results show that such services enable farmers to mitigate some climatic risks and to optimize the inputs use efficiency. The final outcome is an increase of crop yield and an economic benefit compared to farmers that does not use the services.

The response of the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry to forcings by biomass burning aerosol were investigated in high-resolution nested domains over Brazil. The aerosol-layer was found to have a negative direct effect at the top of the atmosphere, but this was largely cancelled by a semi-direct effect which inhibited afternoon cloud formation. The cloud response to the aerosol was found to be highly sensitive to model resolution and the use of convective parameterisation.

Several data sources were searched to collect data on lightning-related fatalities and injuries in Turkey. There were 745 incidents, resulting in 898 deaths, 150 serious injuries and 536 injuries from January 1930 to June 2014. Incidents were most frequent in late spring. The majority of lightning incidents occurred during the afternoon. The number of incidents was relatively higher over the highly populated western parts. The number of male victims was nearly twice the number of female victims.