Experiential Learning: Teaching Forecasters to Communicate Hurricane Impacts Through a Simulation

As tropical cyclone (TC) impacts become more intense in a warming climate and TC information (and misinformation) becomes ubiquitous on social media, national meteorological services are training staff to better communicate hazardous weather and climate events to community stakeholders. To meet this need, COMET led a redevelopment of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and National Hurricane Center (NHC) RA-IV Region TC Forecasting Course, which brought together early-career and seasoned weather forecasters from across the Atlantic, including both English- and Spanish-speakers. As a capstone, COMET developed a 1-day educational simulation that took learners through three forecast cycles across three days leading up to a hurricane landfall. Simulations increase the transfer of learning by placing forecasters in realistic situations, asking them to solve problems and make decisions similar to those in real life.

In this simulation, learners acted as forecasters from local meteorological services while NHC and COMET staff roleplayed as partners such as local leaders, emergency managers, and media members. In each of three forecast cycles, the simulation was designed to replicate the stress forecasters feel when evaluating satellite data, model guidance, and NHC forecast products to produce their time-sensitive forecasts. Then, learners communicated their forecasts in mock coordination calls, media interviews, social media posts, and meetings with local leaders and managers. The hurricane’s landfall set the stage for the final day of the course — reflection and feedback. Here, NHC experts, COMET staff, and the learners reviewed the decisions made and communications provided during the simulation, to assess how the learners could improve in the next hurricane forecast.

Overall the simulation was extremely effective, providing the forecasters an immersive learning experience where they were able to test their forecasting and communication skills in a safe environment. In this session, we will provide an overview of the simulation, and the educational strategies it implemented, while also discussing its effectiveness through surveys and feedback from learners.