Advancing Weather and Climate Literacy via NOAA Science On a Sphere Exhibits

The EarthNow project (http://sphere.ssec.wisc.edu/) regularly creates weather and climate visualizations for spherical display exhibits, like Science On a Sphere (SOS), using near real-time data such as NOAA's National Climate Data Center's (NCDC) monthly climate reports and the Climate Prediction Center's (CPC) seasonal outlooks. Viewing timely weather and climate stories on a large sphere-format allows museum visitors to more intuitively learn about global-scale earth system science. Along with producing large animations for SOS exhibits with background content, the EarthNow team also visits SOS museums (there are now over 100 SOS sites around the world) to conduct best-practice trainings and consultancies. These training sessions provide museums with implementation methods tailored to each museum's goals, allowing for a more personalized learning experience for museum visitors. This presentation will convey evaluation and feedback results from these training sites. The EarthNow project is led by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), in collaboration with the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS-MD) and the NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab.