Weather broadcasters are front-line communicators for helping the public understand not only the weather, but also related weather impacts. In recent times there have been front-page stories of killer heat waves in both Europe and the United States. Each year there are stories of urban flooding and the resultant loss of property and lives. The severity of weather impacts on human health and safety can be linked to environmental conditions brought about by human activity. Likewise, human activity and its direct impact on the environment can also affect the ability of the environment to mitigate the effects of a weather event. Public understanding of the interconnections between weather, climate, environmental health and human health and safety is needed. These interconnections are very important in the urban environment where the built infrastructure can amplify the consequences of a weather event or climate change.

The National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) perceived that the daily weathercast and broadcast meteorologists, via their on-air, community and now internet communications, can be a vehicle for improving public understanding of the interconnections of climate, weather, and the urban environment. In partnership with the COMET Program and with funding from the EPA and private foundations, NEEF is developing an Earth Gauge™ curriculum. This paper reports on the development and communication aspects of the most recently published online course in this curriculum, which is Weather and the Built Environment. Segments of this course will be demonstrated to show how the modern urban environment developed over time, its patterns of growth, the resultant changes in the urban watershed system and the corresponding vulnerability to heavy precipitation events, and the nature of the urban heat island and its role in periods of extreme heat and the development of a local urban climate.

In addition to the detailed coverage of the Weather and the Built Environment Course, this paper will briefly describe the other courses in the Earth Gauge™ curriculum and how this curriculum taken as a whole can serve to be a basis for weathercasters and other community leaders to formulate public messages about weather and climate impacts in the urban environment.