Advancing Weather and Climate Literacy via Museum Exhibits and Mobile Devices

This presentation will feature an educational effort to share weather and climate data with the public led by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) in collaboration with the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS-MD) and NOAA's Environmental Visualization Lab. CIMSS and CICS are working together to create regular visualizations for Science On a Sphere (SOS) exhibits using near real-time data such as NOAA's National Climate Data Center (NCDC) monthly climate reports and the Climate Prediction Center's (CPC) seasonal outlooks. Along with producing large animations for SOS exhibits with background content and trainings for museum docents, small videos (with audio) are being produced for mobile viewing and made freely available in the digital domain via a blog-style website called EarthNow (http://sphere.ssec.wisc.edu). Since the videos demonstrate what datasets like the 2013 Hurricane Season look like on an SOS exhibit, they are spherically shaped (like Earth) and intuitively educational. For example, watching a monthly Climate Digest product conveys a global climate briefing in just a few minutes. Citizen scientists and mobile device users can also receive twitter alerts of product releases to stay informed about recent climate conditions, outlooks and possible connections to extreme weather.