Preprints  

The study demonstrates that environmentally driven animated films can shape the discourse of their audiences. This study also demonstrates how narratives from films such as The Lorax and Tomorrow can lead an audience to consider large-scale environmental issues.

I converted various CO₂ records into music for the piano. This resulted in a statistical piece with five movements and includes musical elements. This conveys a truly unique sonic experience of climate change, and portrays the severe acceleration of emissions. The composition, playable on the piano, conveys climate urgency and the medium of music increases accessibility, audience, and memorability, conveying the immersive experience of climate change that the data deserves.

We evaluate the communication and open data processing of satellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data, which measures ground deformation. We discuss the unique interpretation challenges and the use of automatic data processing and web tools to broaden accessibility. We link these tools with an analysis of InSAR communication through Twitter in which applications to earthquakes and volcanoes prevailed. We discuss future integration with disaster risk reduction strategies.

"Bold statements”, are motivating, easily conceived, but often inaccurate. The study seeks the origin, purpose, and threats of such statements in climate science communication. Bold statement communication is enforced by the urgency of climate change and is useful in raising public awareness and accelerating law-making. However, we demonstrate through three well-known case studies of bold statement communication that such communication strategies encompass risks as misinterpretation lurks.

We give an overview of influential comics and graphic novels on paleontological themes, especially dinosaurs. We explain their different forms of representation and narration, and how their were influenced by the contemporary state of knowledge. The second part deals with the creation of the bilingual graphic novel EUROPASAURUS – Life on Jurassic Islands, a non-verbal comic book, and how this book was perceived by the public.

To contribute advancing education in a warming climate and prepare next generations to play their role in future societies, we designed "Water and Us", a three-module initiative focusing on the natural and anthropogenic water cycle, climate change, and conflicts. Results from 40+ hours of events confirm that students are generally aware of climate change (90 %), but have sparse knowledge of the concrete actions that are in place to mitigate or adapt (up to 20 %).

When constructing graphical environmental forecasts involving uncertainty it is important to consider the background and expertise of end-users. Using novel eye-tracking methods, we show that where people look and the decisions they make are both strongly influenced by prior expertise and the graphical construction of forecast representations common in presentations of environmental data. We suggest that forecasters should construct their presentations carefully bearing these factors in mind.

We analysed geoscientists' representations and attitudes about science communication. To understand which obstacles and factors can have impact predicting public engagement we conducted a survey on Portuguese geoscientists. We concluded that what really matters are factors like the area of expertise, personal experience, institution attitude, lack of financial support and personal satisfaction. These should be the main factors to consider when designing policies to promote public engagement.

There has also been a stark loss of wildlife since 1970 yet climate change receives far greater attention. The ‘warming stripes’ have shown how simple graphics can engage broad audiences. The ‘nature stripes’ show how the loss of wildlife and biodiversity can also be presented in a similar way to positive effect.

It is vital that uncertainty in environmental forecasting is graphically presented to enable people to use and interpret it correctly. Using novel eye-tracking methods, we show that where people look and the decisions they make are both strongly influenced by construction of forecast representations common in presentations of environmental data. This suggests that forecasters should construct their presentations carefully so that they help people to extract important information more easily.

Complex issues of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss require innovative, research-informed solutions. These solutions must incorporate diverse perspectives and engage wider audiences in the environmental geosciences. Art-geoscience partnerships may help to achieve this by providing accessible opportunities for knowledge sharing. We explore opportunities to enhance inclusive engagement of environmental geoscience research through art-science partnerships and provide experience-based advice.

In this paper we describe a process where geoscientists corresponded with school classes in 3 different countries using handwritten letters and polaroid photo albums. The stories they told were based on their experiences in a research expedition in the Arctic. We evaluated the process and show some of the benefits the students experienced corresponding with the scientists in this way.

Fifty documents with input from farmers, rangeland managers, and water resource managers were analyzed to understand climate information needs in the U.S. Corn Belt. Practitioners want information to help them make agricultural, water, and risk management decisions to improve economic outcomes. These results can inform decision support tool development, summarize background information for future research in the Corn Belt, and provide an example for research in other sectors and geographies.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.