Communicating climate change: from awareness to action

Communication about climate change and climate impacts is more effective when carefully matched not only to the context and technical level of the audience, but to the audience's position along the continuum from awareness to action. As the purpose of engagement evolves from stimulating awareness, to facilitating analysis of consequences, to supporting active planning and preparation for future climate change, effective means of communication and information sharing change. This talk will present an overview of almost 15 years of communication about climate and climate impacts by scientists and outreach staff at the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, focusing on efforts that resulted in significant uptake of scientific information in management and/or policy processes. In many of these cases, the act of “communication” changed from translation of climate information, to learning about the stakeholder context for information use, to co-production of knowledge about the consequences of changes in climate. Means of communication include workshops, briefings, reports, co-hosting of conferences, development and delivery of climate change scenarios for planning purposes, and collaboration in research, analysis and the development of technical guidance.