The NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory (EVL) creates satellite and model based animations for dissemination to the public, media, and education sectors to help increase the visibility and understanding of topics related to meteorology and environmental science. The production of these visualizations includes a multimedia approach; the same data may be displayed in a variety of 2D and 3D formats in home, museum, and classroom settings. This process requires coordination with both scientists and user groups in order to have seamless transitions from needs assessments to data access and manipulation, and finally to content generation.

This paper will address the formal and informal educational resources available from the EVL, including data animations, spherical display systems (e.g., Science on a Sphere®), and Flash®-based interactive resources available on the web. Feedback from previous visualization products has provided valuable insights into how data can most effectively be processed and displayed for the disparate levels of climate literacy in the general populous. Often there is a delicate balance in what data to include or exclude, the degree of annotation, movement, and efficacy of layering multiple datasets. However, processing data to get the proper output often results in visualizations that have impacting educational value.