MetEd/Broadcast Meteorlogists Community Page

Weather and the Environment Initiative

Environmental Education & Tools for Broadcast Meteorologists

The NEETF/Roper report concluded that the majority of Americans "have a fairly high and mostly inaccurate opinion that they know more about the environment than they actually do." For example, "45 million Americans think the ocean is a source of freshwater, 120 million think spray cans still have CFCs in them though banned in 1978, another 120 million people think disposable diapers are the leading problem with landfills when they are about 1% of the problem, and 130 million believe that hydropower is America’s top energy source, though it accounts for just 10% of the total."

Noting that "meteorologists are powerful and trusted science communicators," the report recommends organizations like AMS, NSF, and NOAA devote more resources toward educating broadcast meteorologists on local environmental issues "so they can convert the weathercast to an environmental cast."

National Environmental Education Founcation's (NEEF) Earth Gauge^TM Initiative is one such effort intended to help you bridge the environmental information gap. So far, this initiative has resulted in:

• Development of the Earth Gauge^TM environmental information service
• Reaching 87 media markets that include 93 local TV stations, 19 radio stations and the Weather Channel
• 120 TV broadcast meteorologists and 19 radio meteorologists are participating
• 180 million television viewers and 1.7 million radio listeners are reached
• Implementation of this Broadcast Met Community Website on MetEd

The COMET Program's involvement with the Earth Gauge initiative is to partner with NEEF to develop a curriculum on environmental issues specifically tailored for use by broadcast meteorologists. They are designed to meet broadcast meteorologists' needs for communicating to their communities, providing models for how to communicate to a general audience about environmental issues. Each module contains a wealth of take-away material that can be used to enhance your own community outreach and education activities. These modules will also count for continuing education credit under the AMS CBM certification program. See the Featured Training Materials for descriptions and links to the Earth Gauge modules