Exploring different routes for communicating scientific research to broader audiences

The Royal Meteorological Society is the UK’s Professional and Learned Society for weather and climate. We work to strengthen the science and raise awareness of the importance of meteorology, support meteorological professionals and inspire enthusiasts. In line with our charitable purpose, science communication is fundamental to many of the activities ongoing at the Society. To name just a few relevant initiatives, the Society holds 65+ events each year, runs an enthusiast blog, runs an annual weather photography competition, and publishes several non-academic books.

We will highlight our recent efforts to communicate journal content to a broader audience; primarily research published in one of our own eight journals, but also landmark reports. Activities include: regularly sharing new articles on social media, producing press releases and organising press briefings, creating short plain language ‘research summaries’ for our website, producing freely available back-to-basics style articles in our member journal with accompanying podcast episodes, and hosting a variety of multidisciplinary events around a range of research article types. We have also been able to use the content published in our journals to support and inform our climate change communication training delivered to broadcast meteorologists and journalists at various media organisations. We will evaluate the impact of our engagement and the audience reach for these activities to better inform future projects at the Society.