Communicating Scientific Climate Papers and Reports to the General Public: How NOAA is using its arsenal of traditional, web-based and social media tools to successfully raise public awareness

Over the past year, NOAA experienced increasing amounts of success in rolling out major climate scientific reports and key research findings to targeted audiences. Such efforts have not only helped keep climate issues, such as extremes and climate change, on the radar screen of the public consciousness, but helped raise public awareness and understanding of complex climate issues. The key element to NOAA's success has been increased use of visuals, videos, and working with scientists to tell stories that is interesting and engaging to various public audiences. This presentation will focus on how NOAA is using its on-line resources, including the NOAA Climate portal (climate.gov), as well as related social media, outreach and extension efforts to “roll out” monthly climate reports from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, larger synthesis reports such as the State of the Climate in 2011published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and other more targeted research, such as theExplaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective report. Specifically we address the importance of translating scientific information into formats of interest to the public, the creation of videos and visuals and what appeals to the public, the criticality of individual scientist participation, as well as using extension agents around NOAA and other agencies to assist in continuing to spread and make key messages and content relevant to local audiences.