Preprints  

In this paper we discuss the instrumental role of the press in informing and educating on the subject of climate science and climate change. We illustrate with an example of a dissemination format called Weather Stories, published daily in one of the most read newspapers in Spain. The particularities of this journalistic format are described with a practical example on how a relatively complex physical concept: the jet stream.

This paper extracts key learning from two case studies (India and Mozambique), outlining solutions and approaches to challenges in developing forecast products. These lessons and solutions can be used by forecasters and practitioners to support the development of useful, appropriate, and co-designed forecast information for institutional decision-makers to support more effective early action in advance of disasters.

Natural events like earthquakes provide an opportunity for geoscientists to communicate Earth Science with the public. YouTube has a large number of users but little is known if and how YouTube videos on timely natural events engage and communicate geoscience to the public. Our results show that timely videos about geologic events in the news better engage younger and more diverse audiences to be interested in Earth Science and stimulates more meaningful dialogues with certain YouTube users.

We present the ‘Magnetic to the Core’ project, which communicated paleomagnetism to members of the general public through hands-on experiments. The impact of the project was tested with an interactive quiz, which shows that this outreach event was successful in impacting visitors’ learning. We hope our Magnetic to the Core project can serve as an inspiration for other Earth science laboratories looking to engage a wide audience and measure the success and impact of their outreach activities.

Virtual fieldtrips have become a crucial resource during the COVID-19 pandemic within geoscience education. This study presents a critical evaluation of their use, using real world examples delivered to a masters level class at the University of Aberdeen. Our work highlights several key findings which can be used to help plan virtual field trips, and how associated disadvantages of their use can be mitigated through a blend of physical and virtual fieldtrips.

Rainbow and red-green colour schemes are widely used in scientific publications despite being known to be problematic, particularly to people with colour blindness. This study builds on previous work to investigate how often they are used in geoscience publications. Based on a survey of over 2,500 papers from six journals, it is found that over half of published papers have maps or graphs with colour issues, and which are therefore potentially misleading to readers.

Virtual field trips have been used to engage students unable to go in the field with geological field work. Here we investigate the perceptions of staff and students before and after a virtual field trip; including investigating the success of mitigation measures designed to decrease barriers to engagement and inclusion. We conclude that negative and positive perceptions exist and that effective mitigations can be used to improve the student experience.

Virtual 3D models are becoming fundamental to support field-based geoscience, with drones and image-based modelling providing rapid workflows for generating 3D datasets for mapping and education. Here, we present V3Geo, a cloud-based repository to facilitate 3D model searching, reuse, sharing and visualisation. We highlight the potential value of V3Geo for the geoscience community with examples of scenarios in publication and teaching where the repository is already being employed.

Our pedagogic framework suggests that using living labs for educational purposes can provide environments where authentic activities and assessment can be readily provided, create an environment where students become stakeholders in adjunct processes, help educators work toward inclusive and authentic alternatives to residential fieldwork (where needed), and provide alternative fieldwork (and other activities) locations to help rationalise curricula financial and environmental footprints.

Geology in not apolitical. Here we explore what Decolonising the Curriculum means, both in a wider sense, but specifically for the discipline of geology. We outline some of geologies colnial past, and point to its colonial present, in the hope that we can do better in the future. We explain some of the discipline-specific jargon associated with decol. Some suggestions are included to help geology teams begin their Decolonising the Curriculum journey.

Many projects in their reporting phase are required to provide a clear plan to evaluate the results of those efforts aimed to translate scientific results to a broader audience. This paper illustrates methodologies and strategies used in the framework of a European research project to assess the impact of knowledge transfer activities, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and provides recommendations and hints for developing a useful Impact Plan for scientific projects.

We present a Geology of Yosemite Valley virtual field trip (VFT) and companion exercises produced to substitute for physical field experiences. The VFT is created as an Earth project in Google Earth Web, a versatile format that allows access through a web browser. The module's progression from VFT to mapping exercise to geologically-reasoned decision-making results in high quality student work; students find it engaging, enjoyable, and educational.

This paper outlines educational materials appropriate to teach upper-division or graduate-level geoscience students how to produce and interpret high-resolution topography data. These datasets are useful in interpreting river and hillslope processes with implications for flooding and mass wasting. Students can use the training for environmental jobs or research settings.

The news media has been identified as one of the ways weather hazard risk can be communicated. However, hazards become subject to newsworthiness. Here, it is presented that the media focus of Northern Hemisphere Summer 2021 was storms and flooding. This is despite the fact there were also a number of high profile extremes for heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

Climate change is one of the major challenges of our society and therefore we present a climate risk training for tertiary students and practitioners. The training uses a hands-on method and was tested with 5 independent groups in Brazil. We find that the application of a mapping exercise supports learning about climate risk, as well as the development of problem-solving skills. The proposed training enables the teaching of climate risk in stand-alone courses and professional development.

Current science communication initiatives in universities draws from media and journalism to encourage scientists to be competent communicators of their research in order to show the relevance of scientific knwowledge to societal concerns. An alternative but less popular source of inspiration is from marketing and public relations. Here, science communication is reappraised through the lens of three leading marketing paradigms: 'make and sell', 'sense and respind' and 'guide and co-create'.

It is an aspiration to infer flow conditions from bedform morphology (e.g. riverbed ripples) where sedimentary structures preserve the geological past, or in inaccessible environments (e.g. Mars). This study was motivated by the idea of better designing an 'AI' algorithm by using lessons from non-AI (i.e. human) abilities. Survey participants demonstrate that the task is visually possible, but geoscience expertise does not help, so an algorithm might be trained well from the data alone.

Geoscience courses, such as geology and geomorphology, require not only classroom lessons and laboratory exercises, but field trips as well. Here, we performed a virtual navigation on Naxos Isl., Cyclades (Greece) for a series of virtual field trips, which took place during webinars in the framework of Erasmus+ CIVIS. Taking into consideration the feedback from 100 students we evaluate the effectiveness of virtual fieldtrips as an alternative form of education.

The Strike and Dip (SaD) tool is a desktop virtual reality environment to teach taking strike and dip measurements and compiling geologic maps. SaD replicates real world field mapping by using virtual 3D outcrop models and a geologic compass the user manipulates to take measurements. SaD was implemented in an introductory geology course and students were surveyed about their experience with it. We found that the experience was overall positive and is a viable resource for accessible field trips.

We designed interactive, open-ended video games that simulate field geology to address the learning goals of traditional, in-person exercises for geology students. When these simulations were implemented in college courses, students used virtual versions of standard geology measuring tools to collect data but could also visualize and collect data in new ways, with a jetpack and instantaneous graphing tools. The games were for remote learning, but the tools can also enhance in-person instruction.

In this paper we suggest that introductory level geoscience students can learn more about the Earth and the processes that change it through well designed interactive videos and 3-D images than they typically can learn from a field trip or live lecturer, textbook, and hand samples. This is particularly important at this time because many schools and universities are moving away from actual field experiences and there is a common viewpoint that geology is not a "real" science.

Geological (Engineering) Field Methods is a core course at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada where students learn how to investigate the Earth. Typically, this course involves weekly field trips to visit a variety of rock outcrops to learn navigation, observation, and measurement. Remote delivery of this course in fall 2020 due to COVID-19 required a transformation using new virtual, manual, and blended tools. Although largely successful, a return to in-person teaching is recommended.

This paper presents an analysis of public responses to U.S. National Weather Service heat-related Facebook posts for the Phoenix (Arizona) County Warning Area to identify community norms that may present challenges to the effectiveness of heat risk communication. Findings suggest that local audiences tend to view heat as “normal” and the ability to withstand heat as a marker of community identity. Recommendations are provided for harnessing those norms to promote positive behavioral change.

GAIA 5.0 presents based on concepts from Plato to Poincaré, the Earth as hypersphere, and as complex living system embedded into a multi-dimensional dynamic space model based on 5-dimensional hyper-Euclidean geometry. It visualizes a coupled atmosphere-ocean dynamics model by using ECMWF reanalysis data sets of the very severe cyclonic storms (Luban & Titli) over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal (2016). Finally a discrete model for the formation of aerosol is suggested.

We have continued the interdisciplinary study on climate and music and have developed the crosscutting study plans on the climate and cultural understanding education, for promoting the Fundamental ESD Literacy. This review article re-integrates the results of our studies referring to our papers written in Japanese, mainly paying attention to the regional characteristics of the seasonal cycles and the songs/traditional seasonal events around Germany, Northern Europe and Japan.

Everybody experiences weather and has, likely, a grasp on the notion of different climates. There are discussions on how to define climate, since climate is a policy-relevant topic. Here, I try to clarify why the saying Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get is an appropriate definition that, however, depends on the definition of what may be seen as weather.

The measurement of knowledge transfer is considered an important component of the overall performance assessment of research groups. It is, however, not a trivial task, because there is agreement on neither the definition nor on the logical structure of knowledge. In this paper related problems are summarized and approaches to the measurement of knowledge transfer are critically discussed.

A simulation tool has been realized with which the sensitivity of the Earth climate system to human interference can be studied. The tool is intended to offer users of the software, e.g. students in higher education, support in gaining insight into critical aspects of the climate system and thus counteracting common misconceptions with regard to the functioning of this system. The conceptual design of the tool is based on the paradigm learning as experimenting.