EOS3.2

A recent geoscience education project, undertaken in Irish secondary schools using a children's rights based methodology that incorporated student voice in the design, implementation, and analysis, began with a focus on "Earth Science" but ended, through the influence of the student co-researchers, with a focus on climate literacy. Teenagers have seen the writing on the wall, as sea levels and global temperatures rise, and traditional career paths and global superpowers fall. 

Following on from the aforementioned project, an international comparative study currently ongoing seeks to establish global best practice in geoscience education and climate literacy, with the aim of facilitating improvement in the Irish context. Research suggests Irish school students are eager to learn about the Earth, but are frustrated by classes on climate change that are not actionable and do not address the systemic causes of the climate catastrophe. There is an appetite among teenagers and young people to learn more, but simply adding more classes or more class time isn't sufficient, the classes must be appropriately challenging, honest, and action-focused. This ongoing research seeks to provide guidance and tools to achieve that in Irish formal and informal education. 

Thus, in this presentation, the findings of a recent geoscience and climate change education project will be discussed in the context of how the expressed needs and opinions of the participating students have impacted the ongoing international comparative study seeking to improve Ireland's geoscience and climate literacy.

How to cite: Neenan, E. E.: Rising To The Challenge: Addressing climate literacy in Ireland through the lens of student rights, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12669, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12669, 2021.

The Royal Meteorological Society believes that every student should leave school with the basic climate literacy that would enable them to engage with the messages put forward by the media or politicians, or to make informed decisions about their own opportunities and responsibilities.

Through 2019/ 2020, students, the media and academics became increasingly vocal in demanding that more climate change be taught in UK schools. With a rigid National Curriculum and exam specifications, part of the problem lies in students (and teachers) not realising the relevance of concepts and processes they have actually been taught in school to understanding climate change and the broad spectrum of impacts, mitigation and adaptation issues associated with it. In addition, weather and climate are commonly perceived as being amongst the harder topics in geography and so, even when they are taught at all, geography teachers are used to teaching weather, climate and climate change separately, not highlighting the close ties and links between the topics.

With this in mind, the Royal Meteorological Society has developed a full scheme of work for 11-14 year old students which integrates climate change thinking into weather and climate lessons. Hard copy teacher’s guides have been distributed to schools throughout the UK, free of charge, with associated teaching resources being made available online. Recognising the importance of teacher understanding, the resources are accompanied by CPD materials for teachers.

In 2021, we hope to build on this work by developing resources and teacher training materials for science teachers and students.

How to cite: Knight, S.: Building Climate Change into Weather and Climate Teaching, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-22, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-22, 2021.

The Earth and humanity face real existential threats.  The problems are well known: global warming, climate change (CC), deforestation, pollution, temperature increase, biodiversity loss and so on.

CC is the most dangerous threat of our time.  It “affects every single living being and every ecological niche, with poorer communities suffering disproportionately” (session abstract).  Action and knowledge are needed to combat this crisis so that future generations are saved.

It is important that people learn about CC and its effects, and then learn how to act.  Climate literacy/learning (CL) is the only way in which people can come to understand and become literate so as to make decisions that are grounded in geoethical principles.  As the session abstract says, “the more people are knowledgeable about the changes affecting their lives, the more they will be able to make informed decisions and to adapt and mitigate”.  

Many CL paths exist, all the way down from masters level courses, through collective initiatives, to individual actions.  In our presentation, we will review a variety of CL actions and methods.  These include:

• En-ROADS, a simulation model, developed by Climate Interactive, for negotiating scenarios to limit future global warming. 
• Fridays For Future (FFF), “a global climate strike movement that started in August 2018”.  
• Online participatory simulation to learn about the effect of CC on the oceans, with people from many countries.
• PhD programme on CC impacts on natural coastal risks and adaptation pathways for the Mediterranean coast.
• University courses in environmental science and in ecology.
• Youth Climate Leaders (YCL), an organisation created by four Brazillain women “to offer solutions to help young people tackle [...] the climate crisis and structural unemployment”.  
• Associations, experience volunteering.
• Conferences, participation.
• Designing, playing and debriefing games.
• MOOCs, our experience with several online courses on CC and CL.
• Reading and video documentaries.

We also encourage attendees to share their thoughts and outline their own CL experiences and methods.  We will also attempt to answer questions that the audience may have.

How to cite: Promduangsri, P., Promduangsri, P., Bolouri, F., Caballero Leiva, I. M., Khodja, L., Knecht, E., Matsuoka, F., Parigi, R., and Sharma, L.: A smörgåsbord of climate literacy methods: Outlines & experiences, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3041, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3041, 2021.

The essential role of education in addressing the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change is increasingly being recognised at an international level. The Office for Climate Education (OCE) develops educational resources and proposes professional development opportunities to support teachers, worldwide, to mainstream climate change education. Drawing upon the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, the OCE has produced a set of educational resources that cover the scientific and societal dimensions, at local and global levels, while developing students’ reasoning abilities and guiding them to take action (mitigation and/or adaptation) in their schools or communities. These resources include:

1. Ready-to-use teacher handbook that (i) target students from the last years of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (aged 9 to 15), (ii) include scientific and pedagogical overviews, lesson plans, activities and worksheets, (iii) are interdisciplinary, covering topics in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and physical education, (iv) promote active pedagogies: inquiry-based science education, role-play, debate, projectbased learning.

2. A Summary for teachers of the IPCC Special Report, presented together with a selection of related activities and exercises that can be implemented in the classroom. 

3. A set of 10 videos where experts speak about a specific issue related to the ocean or the cryosphere, in the context of climate change.

4. A set of 4 multimedia activities offering students the possibility of working interactively in different topics related to climate change.

5. A set of 3 resources for teacher trainers, offering turnkey training protocols on the topics of climate change, ocean and cryosphere.

How to cite: Klein, S., Guilyardi, E., Sadadou, D., Tricoire, M., and Wilgenbus, D.: Resources for teachers on the “Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13240, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13240, 2021.

The need of dedicated educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications was identified as a gap in the official European offer already in 2013 when the Virtual GMES Academy concept was launched with the Salzburg protocol in the framework of EU4Regions project. Since then, the goal to fill this educational gap (no official academic courses are presently offered covering all the aspects of Space Technologies from the mission design up to the applications developments) has been included, as a pillar, in the European Copernicus-uptake strategy, After the start of the European network of Copernicus Academies, the EO4GEO project took the initiative to design the Body of Knowledge (BoK) to be at the base of new specific educational curricula and well identified skills in the field. 
The present status of development of Bok, its relevance even for non-EU and particularly for developing countries, is here discussed and presented. 

How to cite: Tramutoli, V., Capece, N., Colonna, R., Erra, U., Filizzola, C., Lacava, T., Masiello, G., Satriano, V., Scanniello, G., and Serio, C.: On the need of new educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16133, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16133, 2021.

Inverse modeling is a commonly used method to infer greenhouse gases (GhGs) sources and sinks based on their observed concentrations in the atmosphere. It is a Bayesian framework and requires a priori fluxes of all the evaluated sources and sinks, atmospheric observations, an atmospheric transport model that relates the observations to the a priori fluxes and the uncertainties of both fluxes and observations. Various techniques exist to solve the inversion.

Atmospheric inverse modeling is and will become even more important in the future quantification of GhGs to monitor the compliance of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Therefore, the scientific and educational communities are becoming more interested in using atmospheric inversions and this has risen a necessity of creating tools that facilitate understanding as well as training in these techniques.

Quantifying anthropogenic GhG emissions, such as CO₂ from fossil fuel burning or CH₄ from human activities, from atmospheric concentration observations is difficult since the carbon from all sources, both natural and anthropogenic, is mixed in the atmosphere, making it necessary to use other signals or tracers to separate anthropogenic emissions from natural sources. For fossil fuel CO₂ emissions radiocarbon (¹⁴CO₂) is an excellent emission tracer because, due to its radioactive decay (~ 5000 years), it cannot be found in fossil fuels, which have been deposited millions of years ago as organic material. We have developed a Jupyter Notebook based on Python for the quantification of multi-tracer GhGs fossil fuel emissions and its isotopes. The notebook solves for the emissions by applying atmospheric inversions within a practical two-box model. The inverse modeling notebook is based on the analytical maximum a posteriori (MAP) solution of the Bayes’ theorem and allows to assess the error in the state vector and its uncertainty.

This basic but powerful notebook is meant to be an educational and training tool for university students and new researchers in the field as well as for researchers interested in the estimation of long-term (>centennial) time-series of GhG emissions since it is built as a modular algorithm to be easily modified, coupled or expanded to other approaches or models depending on the application. The notebook was initially developed for the inverse modeling of CO₂ and ¹⁴CO₂ simultaneously and it is being expanded for additional GHG such as CH₄ and ¹³CH₄.

How to cite: Gómez-Ortiz, C., Monteil, G., and Scholze, M.: Time-series of GhG emissions estimation for the learning of inverse modeling, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14885, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14885, 2021.

Glacier retreat provides clear, visual evidence of environmental change in response to warming temperatures around the world. In the tropical Andes of Peru, glaciers act as critical buffers to water supply essential to water, food, and energy security downstream, especially during the dry season. The direct and indirect impacts of glacier change are an important part of the global sustainability challenge within the context of both climate change and increased pressures on resources. Public understanding around glacier-fed water supplies, and subsequent threats to this for millions of people due to climate change, is an important component of climate literacy.

In this context, we have developed a web-based interdisciplinary citizen science glacier mapping tool (GlacierMap) to help to raise awareness of these issues, particularly amongst UK high school pupils, and to contribute to increased public support for mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Users of GlacierMap undertake an interactive learning experience by mapping a glacier from two different periods (1984 and 2018) from freely available Landsat data, resulting in a visual demonstration of glacier retreat within Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, while learning more about the impacts of this retreat from information provided by the project. 

During the first four months of data collection we integrated pre- and post-mapping questionnaires into the GlacierMap app to evaluate the extent to which participation in mapping impacted understanding of glacier change and concern regarding the associated impacts. We also assessed the value of ‘crowd-sourcing’ glacier mapping for the purposes of glacier monitoring and data generation through comparison of mapping conducted by the general public and that of a control group with previous education and/or work experience in glaciology. In doing so, we have identified a number of challenges and opportunities with regards to the use of a citizen science-based educational activity for climate learning. Challenges relate to recruitment of participants, evaluation, and ethics (particularly when working with children and young people), while opportunities were identified in terms of increasing public awareness, the provision of alternative forms of learning, and global reach.  

How to cite: Clason, C., Rangecroft, S., Kallis, G., Lewin, S., Mullier, T., Blake, W., and Stewart, I.: GlacierMap: a citizen science mapping tool for evaluating glacier change and contributing to climate literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9531, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9531, 2021.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby is an international organization educating citizens and their political representatives on a solution that could on its own reach 80% of the Paris COP21 objectives. The beauty of this solution is that, although Climate Change is complex and thousands of solutions, regulations, fundings are already implemented, it is a unique and simple solution that would be much more effective and could complement existing ones in driving the change we need. However, this solution is new to most citizens and politicians and needs to be explained to citizens’s volunteering for climate action, policy developers and politicians.

The focus on Carbon Pricing is based on the international economic and scientific consensus as the highest priority primary legislation to address climate change. The need to redistribute the revenues in the form of dividend or climate income is driven both by effectiveness and acceptability and has been enhanced by the Yellow Vest experience in France and the Covid 19 impact. 

Between 2014 and 2020 national teams within the EU have educated and lobbied to build political will with national governments in favour of Carbon Pricing as the most effective climate policy. In the last two years CCL began to work at the European level developing strategy to build political will for the essential support from the European Parliament to support and encourage consistent Carbon Pricing both inside the EU and Internationally. 

Starting with mutual respect and appreciation, more than 500 groups in more than 50 countries engage society in its widest sense. “We seek to educate, build partnerships with and gain the support of community leaders and non-governmental organizations, both nationally and locally.” In Europe CCL has active groups lobbying in Germany; France; Sweden; UK; Denmark; Norway; Spain; Poland & Portugal. In the EU Parliament lobby experience is positive across a range of party groups with positive responses. This competency is currently being scaled up to build political will within the European Parliament.

CCL France, CC Europe and CCE  trains individuals to engage in climate communication on a human level, learning about the concerns, beliefs, and values of the people they seek to educate about the benefits of climate action. This training relies on techniques that include developing effective listening skills, motivational interviewing, and practicing conversational scenarios. 

In this presentation, we will explain and study 

- how CCL is building consensus across the political spectrum: from the market based solution promoted to conservatives to the progressive and efficient solution promoted to social democrats, from “carbon fee and dividend” to “climate income”

- the motivational interviewing used with politicians to build long term relationships and drive change.

- the challenges to explain the solution, from citizens not familiar with carbon footprint nor economic externalities, to policy developers at the EU commission dealing with the Emission Trading System, the energy taxation directive or the border carbon adjustment

How to cite: Ruban, S.: Citizens Climate Lobby, educating citizens to advocate for an effective climate solution, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9295, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9295, 2021.

The Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (JASU) is a state-funded extracurricular educational system that develops and implements methods of science education. Climate education is an essential component of educational system at the JASU. Currently, the JASU has more than 250,000 students working in 64 scientific areas. In 2018, the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine received the status of Category 2 Science Education Center under the auspices of UNESCO and joined the network of Copernicus Academies.

          In 2012, a new section, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing of the Earth (RS), was established at the Kyiv branch of the JASU, which is supervised by the GIS and RS Laboratory. Whereas the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by a booming growth of IT and unprecedented environmental problems and climate changes, the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine aims not only to prepare modern students for life in new environment, but also to improve their climate literacy. Therefore, the GIS and RS Laboratory set a goal to teach the students to utilize modern technologies for monitoring environmental conditions of a particular area through analysis of satellite imagery within the framework of the All-Ukrainian Competition, “Ecopohliad” (Ecoview) (hereinafter referred to as the “Competition”).

          Every day we receive arrays of spatial data that are published on the Internet. However, without proper analysis and, most importantly, interpretation, such data are deposits of rough diamonds hiding in rock formations. Knowledge of the sources and ways to analyse satellite imagery enables us to independently verify the information provided by the media or official statistics. In its activities, the Laboratory uses extensively cloud services, EO Browser and Giovanni, which are characterized by intuitive interface and large array of available satellite imagery.

          The Competition was held for the first time in 2019-2020. It was attended by 341 secondary school students. Topics of competition projects chosen by the students were mostly related to the climate change at their places of residence. In particular, Artem Shelestov examined the relationship between the area of greenery in Kyiv city using Sentinel-2 satellite images and average annual air concentration of PM 2.5 based on surveillance sensors data. Bohdan Avramenko examined the traffic load on the air in the city of Starobilsk, compared the data with the information from Sentinel-5P satellite, and developed appropriate recommendations.  Marharyta Korol analysed the scale and consequences of the fire that occurred in September 2019 in the village of Novi Sokoly near the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and the impact of this emergency situation on air pollution.

          These studies were not only of scientific interest, but also of practical importance. In particular, the results of investigations conducted by Competition winners were published in the media.

How to cite: Babiichuk, S., Dovgyi, S., and Kuchma, T.: Using Remote Sensing Technologies to Improve Climate Literacy of Students at the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukrain, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5380, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5380, 2021.

Our societies are violently hit by the implications of climate change. The IPCC keeps on waving red flags to the governments since its creation but few progress has been made, most of the proposed decisions do not rely on scientific facts.

Article 12 of Paris agreement requests that states made necessary efforts to inform and educate people. Teaching scientific data on climate change to K12 is our duty to provide them with the required knowledge and competencies to face challenges of the future.

Our proposal is to tackle climate change awareness and training through a global multilevel approach whose starting point is to measure meteorological parameters within the classroom or the school, then reach the use of digital data on climate projections computed by international laboratories.

1. Using a thermometer in primary schools : an easy tool to establish a scientific approach to weather and stimulate student’s curiosity to go further. The aim is to bring pupils from the empiric observation of the temperature to quantitative measurements of temperature. It can lead to understand that differences between observed temperatures contribute to the definition / recognition of seasons and their changes across time.

2. Weather-station : one of the best multi-purpose devices for lower secondary schools. It is a visible signal for families, pupils, administrations. Describing the variations in time or in space, smoothly bring the pupils from the weather observed to the parameters of local or regional climate; it is a first approach of the difference between errors and uncertainties.

3. Mathematical models and access to laboratory resources : scientific resource to tackle climate change in upper secondary schools. Even if the equations are too complex for a student to manipulate, students will get access to results computed in laboratories. It will lead to giving an insight to global or regional models and to the scenarios which take into account the long term variation of constraints on the models to build climate projections.

Understanding does not mean blind acceptation and the role of science teachers is to provide the students with the necessary skills and knowledge to be able to understand the climate situation and its evolution. In any case social acceptance will be facilitated when citizens understand the facts and reasons that back uncomfortable decisions or actions.

How to cite: Vidal, G., Eyraud, C.-H., Larose, C., and Lejan, É.: Teaching scientific evidences of climate change to K12 : a key to reach social acceptance of mitigation and adaptation strategies, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8097, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8097, 2021.

Climate change is affecting the foods we love and need—just about everything on the menu is changing. Plants, the basis of life, require the right temperatures, water, soil, air, and sunlight. All but sunlight are changing and having subtle and in many cases ominous impacts on our foods and beverages—from spices and herbs to pistachios. The flavors of teas, the protein and mineral content of wheat, vitamins in rice, and yields of many crops are undergoing change. This story needs to be told given the cultural, historical, and personal connections everyone has to food. The communication and outreach approaches taken to enhance climate literacy include a book – Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods we Love and Need and a companion website, which includes a searchable database of the hundreds of food ingredients that are changing. The changing menu may be a way to join forces—consumers, producers, chefs, restaurateurs, and food businesses—to find a common ground and draw more attention and action to address this grand challenge of climate change. We all eat.

How to cite: Hoffmann, M.: Using the foods we love and need to enhance climate literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2780, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2780, 2021.

If literacy can be defined as competence or knowledge in a specific area, then climate change literacy is competence or knowledge in the area of climate change, its impacts, and its solutions. Climate change literacy is a vital element in strategies for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13: "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts" — and, frankly, safeguarding the survival of the human species and most life on Earth. Developing climate change literacy in individuals, institutions, and societies entails understanding why it is important, who must be involved, what it includes, where and when it takes place, how to deal with challenges that arise, and what the end result, a climate-change-literate citizen, will look like.

How to cite: Johnston, J.: Developing Climate Change Literacy to Combat Climate Change and Its Impacts, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3815, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3815, 2021.

STEM teachers in Latvia acknowledge that the climate issue is one of the most difficult and incomprehensible topics for students because of the complexity of the climate system itself and because that students do not see the consequences and responsibilities of their actions. In addition, there is little climate-related teaching materials available in Latvian language.

In 2020, we have implemented the experience of EIT Climate-KIC project “Young Innovators” into the school's curriculum and nonformal education (through Latvian 4Hclub – leading and largest NGO) in Latvia.

“Young Innovators” is a pilot program for youngsters (12-18), to promote their entrepreneurial and social skills, systemic thinking aimed at tackling climate change, reducing environmental problems and improving the living environment. Together with stakeholders they are working on real-life challenges (more about the program: https://younginnovators.climate-kic.org/about-the-programme/).

We started with the webinar cycle for NGO leaders in April (it should be noted, that for many of them it was their first webinar ever), while in August the webinars were organized for geography and STEM teachers. In the summer (when restrictions were lifted) we had workshops with students: using the mind map and photo-voting methods, we identified the most important areas for students and the major environmental problems. Using the project tools, the analytical assessment and visioning of the problem has been done. The last step was – visiting the local authorities.

In addition, at the end of August we organized a 3-hour Climathon (total 250 participants), where we worked on the challenges given by the stakeholder - WWF (Waste food), Enefit Latvija (green energy solutions); national fruit growers (local apples marketing campaigns) etc.

Project methods and tools can be used in both – formal and non-formal education systems and were welcomed by both students and teachers.

Activities were carried out within the framework of EIT Climate-KIC financial support.

How to cite: Kalvane, G. and Krastiņa, S.: “Young Innovators” story: case study of Latvia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5714, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5714, 2021.

Since the IPCC (2018) 1.5°C Report, the climate emergency is widely recognized. Then 2019 COP25 statement by IPCC Chair Dr H. Lee ,referring to the three recent IPCC Special Reports (2018,2019,2019) is crucial emphasizing that global emissions MUST decline by and from 2020. The Summaries for Policy Makers (SPMs) are convincing for communication as all world governments approve them. Though the IPCC assesses climate change, the environmental health emergency called climate change is climate system disruption from atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution. The IPCC assessments can be used to produce risk assessments. IPCC published climate change science reports are invaluable, especially the FAQs. The most important message in the IPCC (2014) AR5 and 1.5°C Report is that global emissions have to decline rapidly from 2020, via market failure corrections, for a 1.5°C and for a 2°C limit. The greatest impact to humanity is on food security, and from the IPCC we describe regional crop impacts and crop model limitations. We elucidate IPCC reports on confidence, carbon budget, net zero, negative emissions, value judgements, and recommendations. We clarify inertias, commitment, risks, and amplifying feedbacks. Long-term data trends, rather than only model projections, can now be relied on. We relate IPCC scenarios to worst-case, business-as-usual and best case. For risk we use the IPCC upper ranges, because long-term projected temperature increases are underestimated as they do not account for amplifying feedbacks or decline of carbon sinks, and are only based on a single median climate sensitivity (3C). Although the IPCC shows that atmospheric CO2 is "forever," IPCC SPM projections are all now only to 2100.  From the IPCC RCP scenarios the world is tracking closest to the worst case scenario (RCP8.5). On this scenario the IPCC 1.5°C Report projects 1.5°C by 2035 and 2°C  by 2047. The greatest risk to the future of humanity and most life is multiple inter-reinforcing amplifying feedbacks that lead to hothouse Earth and on to runaway. The evidence for multiple Arctic feedback emissions and Amazon die-back can be found in the IPCC 2014 5th assessment. This reinforces the imperative requiring immediate and rapid global emissions decline. 

How to cite: Carter, P.: Using the IPCC for Communicating Both the Full Extent of the Global Climate Emergency and the Required Response, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6315, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6315, 2021.

Our project “Feedbacks and Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Engaging Learners in STEM Using NASA and GLOBE assets” also called “Arctic and Earth SIGNs” (STEM Integrating GLOBE and NASA) engages in climate change education, audiences underserved and underrepresented in STEM e.g. Alaska Natives, those economically disadvantaged, and those who work in rural regions. We invite and support teams of formal and informal educators and community members from Alaska and beyond to participate in a Climate Change in My Community course and to work with youth on climate learning and a stewardship project relevant to their community. Our strategies include: 1) using a culturally responsive learning model we developed, 2) braiding multiple knowledge systems, 3) negotiating content and process in course planning and implementation, 4) ensuring a voice and a seat at the table for everyone, 5) inquiry-based, experiential and place-based STEM teaching practices, 6) intergenerational teaching and learning, 7) interactive Meet the Scientist live video sessions, 8) building relationships within and beyond participant teams and with the project team of educators, Elders and University of Alaska/NASA scientists, 9) providing skills and citizen science tools to engage youth in addressing climate change issues in their communities or for use in developing their community climate change adaptation plans, and 10) cultivating partnerships such as the Association of Interior Native Educators, Renewable Energy for Alaska Project, Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, and the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub.

In 2020, ten teams implemented stewardship projects that reflected many of the principles of citizen/community science that effectively engage diverse audiences. Of these course participants, 100% increased their confidence to facilitate real-world inquiry activities (p < 0.001), 77% increased their knowledge of the earth systems, (p < 0.001) and 69% of the students who teams worked with, reported increased critical thinking skills (p< 0.01).  Twelve individuals from these teams were interviewed: 100% of interviewees reported benefits to students, such as learning to collect data, presenting their findings to their peers, exploring STEM careers, and interacting with scientists; 83% reported specific benefits to themselves as an educator which include increased content knowledge and the opportunity to think more deeply about the science and opportunities to connect with students outside of the classroom; 100% reported that the project goals and activities align with and are relevant to the needs and interests of the participants, including contribution to conservation efforts, contribution to science, curricular goals, and a personal connection; 67% reported community engagement, including involving Elders and community members in data collection and storytelling, representatives of local park and water conservation district offering a science talk to the whole community, and advertising their project at the community post office. Those that didn’t report involving the community noted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How to cite: Sparrow, E., Spellman, K., Chase, M., Buffington, C., Murray, B., Larson, A., and Kealy, K.: Inclusive Strategies in Climate Change Teaching, Learning and Action, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7552, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7552, 2021.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a powerful educational tool, making scientific content available to a large and diverse audience. The MOOC “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” applies science communication principles derived from cognitive psychology and misconception-based learning in the design of video lectures covering many aspects of climate change. As well as teaching fundamental climate science, the course also presents psychological and critical thinking research into climate science denial, teaching students the most effective techniques for responding to misinformation. A number of the enrolled “students" have been secondary and tertiary educators, who have adopted the course content in their own classes as well as adapted their teaching techniques based on the science communication principles presented in the lectures. The MOOC—developed by John Cook while at the University of Queensland's Global Change Insitute—integrates cognitive psychology, educational research and climate science in an interdisciplinary online course that has had over 40,000 enrolments from over 180 countries since the MOOC was launched in 2015.

How to cite: Winkler, B. and Cook, J.: Using an interdisciplinary MOOC to teach climate science and science communication to a global classroom, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8576, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8576, 2021.

Effectively informing the public about anthropogenically accelerated climate change and sustainable energy is one of the most immense challenges of our age. However, web-based 3D environments are cost-effective, accessible tools that can combat many of the challenges associated with global outreach, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This presentation explores how 3D CAD modeling, visual texturing, Three.JS (a WebGL rendering software), and web design can coexist to create effective tools for educators across the world. By applying these simulations, learners are able to examine individual components of objects and break down complex systems into their fundamental parts for simpler understanding. Moreover, by breaking down these systems, individuals are able to more effectively understand the complex physical phenomena that drive our world. In addition, these environments are not limited by topic or language and therefore the spectrum to which we can apply these ideas is not limited. Translating the simulations is relatively straightforward and with the expertise of individuals who can lead this front, the reach of this type of technology can grow even wider. Climate change is a global issue and so work in the field must be addressed as such as well. As a result, these models have the ability to transform the way we learn about global issues and can be a powerful tool in education about sustainable energy, climate change and science in general.

How to cite: Sumners, R., Vargas Suarez, L., Griffiths, J., and Donev, J.: 3D Models for web based climate education, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10232, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10232, 2021.