Climate change and its potential impact are difficult to communicate: it seems far away in time and space and the influence a single person has seems nihil. Besides, alarmistic messages tend to paralyze instead of resulting in actions. So how could we improve a safe landing of the climate change message to policymakers and decision makers, so they can base their decisions on the right information? Making use of visualizations can be highly effective. However, a wrong use of visualization, such as using again and again a starving polar bear, can be counterproductive. In this webinar 2 experts will show examples on the use of visualization in short presentations (each 15 min.) and we will discuss do’s and don’ts in visualization of climate information, good examples of visualization, etc.
Speakers:
• Bernadet Overbeek, advisor weather and climate of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) will give examples of visualization of climate information in the Netherlands: among others examples of regional translations of the Dutch climate scenarios visualized with graphs and maps, an example of ‘Future Weather’, an event with extreme precipitation translated to a 2 degrees warmer climate and the use of storylines with users of climate information that tell their personal story with illustrations.
• Isadora Jimenez, communication specialist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, will give examples of visualizations of climate information for climate services. She works especially on climate services related to solar and wind energy and on climate services for the agricultural sector and the water management sector. She will also present the development of a portal in the Copernicus Climate Change Service for journalists in search for images and data to build their climate change stories.