Bahrain is a small island country in the Arabian Gulf, east of Saudi Arabia. It is charactized by high relative humidity, summer temperatures in the 40's (°C), and a mild winter season with some rain. During the workshop, daytime temperatures were in a very pleasant 25-30° C range, with a lot of cloud cover and a little rain. The atmosphere in Bahrain is usually very hazy, due to a combination of desert dust, sea spray, and possibly some air pollution from traffic in Manama. This accounts for the red sunsets that are common in Bahrain. The photo above shows a typical sunset, looking toward the skyline of Manama as seen across a bay from the workshop site.

David Brooks, Principal Investigator for GLOBE's Aerosols, Water Vapor, and UV-A protocols, was the trainer for GLOBE atmosphere protocols at the 2004 Bahrain train-the-trainers workshop, 4-12 December, 2004. The workshop was superbly organized by Mrs. Zakeya Ahmed Ali, GLOBE coordinator from Bahrain's Ministry of Education. Other GLOBE trainers included Dr. Becky Boger, Mr. Gary Randolph, and Mr. Frank Niepold. Teachers and students attended from Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The workshop was held at a new facility, the Sheik Khalifa Bin Salman Institute of Technology, built on recently reclaimed land on the northern island of Muharraq, near the capital city of Manama.