Five Years of NOAA’s ENSO Blog: A Lesson in Climate Communication

The NOAA “ENSO Blog”, hosted at Climate.gov (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/department/enso-blog), was started in May 2014 as a way to address perceived needs in communicating to audiences interested in and affected by El Niño and La Niña events. Five years and multiple El Niños and La Niñas later, the “ENSO blog“ continues to develop and evolve its messaging based on user needs and advances in ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) science. The “ENSO blog” remains one of the few governmental blogs solely dedicated to improving the communication of subseasonal-to-seasonal climate outlooks. It serves as a way for scientists to add more in depth context to formal forecast products issued by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. The end result is a deeper penetration of ENSO key messages through the media and other trusted sources, including the energy and water resources sectors, and emergency managers. Through well-crafted stories and attractive visuals, the “ENSO blog” has reached well over a million unique page views covering ENSO and other climate topics, marking a successful collaboration between scientists, data visualizers and science journalists.