Minnesota and Wisconsin communities are facing multiple climate hazards including wildfires, drought, pollution, severe storms, flooding, health emergencies, and habitat and species loss. To build a robust youth component to state climate resiliency efforts, the Climate Youth Labs (CY-Labs) project will support place-based learning about climate resiliency with 120+ middle school youth using NOAA assets and elevate their voices through a national public media podcast series for youth. American Public Media and PBS Learning Media will air podcasts, inspiring more youth to create their own climate resiliency solutions. Partners include Twin Cities PBS; the University of Wisconsin-Superior; the University of Minnesota's Hennepin County 4-H program in Minneapolis; Native Suns Solar Cub program at the K-6 Ojibwe-language school in the Red Lake Nation, MN; and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). Rooted in youth empowerment and culturally responsive teaching, CY-Labs will elevate the voices of youth (ages 11-15) as they explore barriers to climate justice. The podcast programs will involve 20 youth at 4-H programs in Minneapolis serving primarily Black youth, 25 Indigenous youth from the Red Lake Nation, and 75 youth from the Northern Waters Environmental school in Hayward, WI (with 25% Ojibwe youth from the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation), the Superior Middle School and Northwestern Middle School in Maple, WI. Educators will learn to use NOAA educational resources including Climate.gov, Teaching Climate, the Global Climate Dashboard, Climate Explorer and the U.S Climate Resilience Toolkit to help youth learn about climate change. Educators will help youth ensure the resiliency and protection of their communities in the face of climate hazards, create meaningful change within their communities, and advocate for climate resiliency solutions aligned with state resiliency plans. CY-Labs draws on recent research that shows that effective climate change education programs are personally relevant, encourage discussion to navigate controversial issues, engage in the scientific process, address misconceptions, and incorporate youth action projects. At the annual Youth Climate Justice Summit in St. Paul, MN and at Superior Days in Madison, WI students will share their solutions with state legislators. Program collaborators include Climate Generation, the Lake Superior Research Institute, NOAA's Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, the MN Governor's Climate Change Subcabinet, the MN House Climate Caucus; the WI Governor's Climate Change Taskforce, the City of Superior Mayor's Office, FEMA's MN and WI State Mitigation Hazard Officers, and TPT NOW, a partnership between PBS, public health agencies and NOAA weather forecasters. Project advisors include: Frank Niepold, NOAA Climate Education Program Manager; Anne Gold, Director of Education & Outreach, NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; Jen Kretser, Director of Climate Initiatives, The Wild Center; Jothsna Harris, Change Narrative; Dr. Michael Notaro, NOAA Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments; Dr. Chris Tessum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Capitol Climate Connection podcasters Patti Acomb and Jamie Long; City Climate Corner podcaster Larry Kraft; Brains On! podcast producers Molly Bloom, Sanden Totten and Marc Sanchez; and Dr. Lisa Gardiner, John Ristvey, Keliann LaConte and Becca Hatheway, UCAR. The evaluator is Dr. Lauren M. Shea.

Minnesota and Wisconsin communities are facing multiple climate hazards including wildfires, drought, pollution, severe storms, flooding, health emergencies, and habitat and species loss. To build a robust youth component to state climate resiliency efforts, the Climate Youth Labs (CY-Labs) project will support place-based learning about climate resiliency with 120+ middle school youth using NOAA assets and elevate their voices through a national public media podcast series for youth. American Public Media and PBS Learning Media will air podcasts, inspiring more youth to create their own climate resiliency solutions. Partners include Twin Cities PBS; the University of Wisconsin-Superior; the University of Minnesota’s Hennepin County 4-H program in Minneapolis; Native Sun’s Solar Cub program at the K-6 Ojibwe-language school in the Red Lake Nation, MN; and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). Rooted in youth empowerment and culturally responsive teaching, CY-Labs will elevate the voices of youth (ages 11-15) as they explore barriers to climate justice. The podcast programs will involve 20 youth at 4-H programs in Minneapolis serving primarily Black youth, 25 Indigenous youth from the Red Lake Nation, and 75 youth from the Northern Waters Environmental school in Hayward, WI (with 25% Ojibwe youth from the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation), the Superior Middle School and Northwestern Middle School in Maple, WI. Educators will learn to use NOAA educational resources including Climate.gov, Teaching Climate, the Global Climate Dashboard, Climate Explorer and the U.S Climate Resilience Toolkit to help youth learn about climate change. Educators will help youth ensure the resiliency and protection of their communities in the face of climate hazards, create meaningful change within their communities, and advocate for climate resiliency solutions aligned with state resiliency plans. CY-Labs draws on recent research that shows that effective climate change education programs are personally relevant, encourage discussion to navigate controversial issues, engage in the scientific process, address misconceptions, and incorporate youth action projects. At the annual Youth Climate Justice Summit in St. Paul, MN and at Superior Days in Madison, WI students will share their solutions with state legislators. Program collaborators include Climate Generation, the Lake Superior Research Institute, NOAA’s Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, the MN Governor’s Climate Change Subcabinet, the MN House Climate Caucus; the WI Governor’s Climate Change Taskforce, the City of Superior Mayor’s Office, FEMA’s MN and WI State Mitigation Hazard Officers, and TPT NOW, a partnership between PBS, public health agencies and NOAA weather forecasters. Project advisors include: Frank Niepold, NOAA Climate Education Program Manager; Anne Gold, Director of Education & Outreach, NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; Jen Kretser, Director of Climate Initiatives, The Wild Center; Jothsna Harris, Change Narrative; Dr. Michael Notaro, NOAA Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments; Dr. Chris Tessum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Capitol Climate Connection podcasters Patti Acomb and Jamie Long; City Climate Corner podcaster Larry Kraft; Brains On! podcast producers Molly Bloom, Sanden Totten and Marc Sanchez; and Dr. Lisa Gardiner, John Ristvey, Keliann LaConte and Becca Hatheway, UCAR. The evaluator is Dr. Lauren M. Shea.

CREATE Resilience: Community Resilience through Education, Art, Technology and Engagement, is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between youth and community to 1) improve environmental hazards literacy, and 2) increase engagement in resiliency actions by youth and adult residents in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. CREATE Resilience is designed to increase community knowledge about weather and climate science, risks from local hazards, and strategies for hazard mitigation, while co-creating a vision for community resilience. Developed by Nurture Nature Center (NNC) in Easton, PA, the four-year project will work with local, state and federal partners in three hazard-prone communities in the Lehigh Valley (Easton, Bangor and Wilson areas). Hazards, particularly weather-related hazards including flooding, have had major impacts in these communities historically and recently, causing extensive damage to property and disruption to community services. Damaging river flooding along the Delaware River in 2004, 2005 and 2006 highlighted major planning and safety challenges for many municipalities in the area with high flood risk, and a recently updated regional Hazard Mitigation plan highlighted other hazards – as well as the need for public education about hazards and mitigation. CREATE Resilience’s advisory board will work with NNC to bring education and engagement events to teach the science of these hazards, as well the household and community-level strategies and tools available for resilience. Partners include the National Weather Service (NWS) Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center and Mt. Holly, NJ Weather Forecast Office, and Weather Prediction Center, as well as LV Planning Commission, Northampton County Emergency Management Agency, LV Community Foundation, Lafayette College, and FEMA Region 3 Mitigation Division. In years 1 and 2, the project will form CREATE Youth Ambassador teams, in which student interns from area high schools will meet NWS meteorologists, engage in community storytelling events, develop local hazard and resilience tours, and learn from climate and other scientists about hazards and strategies for resilience. Ambassadors will also develop and lead programming for community residents. Simultaneously, residents will participate in active-learning education events, dialogue forums, arts-based activities, technology-based programs using NOAA assets, and hands-on preparedness activities. Each community will build a collective understanding of local hazards and mitigation strategies, and co-create a vision for resilience, represented in traveling visual artist-designed murals in the third year of the project. This education and shared vision will build community support for planning and resilience and help households in making better preparedness decisions. Dissemination through Science on a Sphere® and guidebooks will share the replicable model with other organizations and communities, extending the reach of the project. Close cooperation with NWS offices helps the project meet key goals of NOAA’s Education Strategic Plan, related to safety/preparedness and a science-informed society. Through public events and print materials, the project will showcase and interpret NOAA-related science and data with area residents, while creating collaborative learning opportunities for youth and community to interact with NOAA scientists. CREATE Resilience also engages youth and adults in preparing for hazards, and in multi-generational learning to improve community awareness and involvement in preparedness and mitigation.

Understanding climate change and its exacerbating effects on local environmental phenomena (e.g., increase in frequency and/or intensity of drought, ocean acidification, water shortages, degraded fisheries) and how to create resiliency is critical for underserved communities as they are disproportionately impacted by these hazards and yet, have the least capacity to actively respond. To address this issue, Ocean Discovery Institute and its partners will build understanding of climate change and impacts on local hazards, human-nature interactions, and individual and community capacity for resilience through place-based education in the underserved community of City Heights, San Diego, CA. This project, titled “Empowering Climate Change Resiliency through Education in an Underserved Community,” will involve a wide range of partners, including California Sea Grant, the California Nevada Climate Applications Program, NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Cabrillo National Monument, San Diego Canyonlands, RECON Environmental, Inc., and the San Diego Unified Port District. Project activities encompass the design, piloting, and implementation of multi-grade level, integrated curricula that incorporate hands-on student climate science research, innovative solution building, and teacher professional development. This project will serve 1,500 middle school students annually and is expected to increase students’ understanding of scientific concepts and processes and human-nature interactions, improve their ability to make science-informed decisions, and contribute to local resilience efforts.

The goal of the Climate Resilience Education and Action for Dedicated Youth Program (Climate READY Program) is to increase the environmental literacy of South Florida students, teachers, and the general community so they can become more resilient to extreme weather and/or other environmental hazards. To prepare for a future of increasing environmental hazards, communities will need an informed public that is willing to act on decisions on a personal and civic level. Education has the potential to play an important role in achieving that goal. However, despite dire predictions of the impacts of climate change, the topic has yet to make it into mainstream education in the South Florida classroom. Climate READY is a collaborative effort between FAU Pine Jog, the Palm Beach County Office of Resilience, the Coastal Resilience Partnership, South East Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, city sustainability offices in Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, the School District of Palm Beach County and Galaxy E3 Elementary School. Climate READY will focus on engaging some of the most underserved and socially vulnerable communities located in Palm Beach County, Florida. The Climate READY Program has four interconnected components: Climate READY Institute (training 48 students, grades 9-12) to become Climate READY Ambassadors, Afterschool Climate READY Program (engaging at least 300 after school students in grades 4-8), Climate READY Teacher Professional Development (training 48 teachers from targeted schools) and Climate READY Community Outreach (engaging at least 600 community members at local community events). This project will leverage NOAA assets including Science on a Sphere (SOS) technology and datasets, the SOS Explorer Mobile application, Weather Ready Nation, US Climate Resilience Toolkit, and Owlie's Weather-Ready Educational Activities. FAU Pine Jog will use the Climate Action Learning Process to develop all program lessons. The primary outcome of the program will be to enhance the adaptive capacities of identified vulnerable communities so that they are more prepared to respond to climate-related hazards and to increase civic engagement, inclusive decision-making, and equity.

The National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI) is working with The Marine Mammal Center, Knology, and the Frameworks Institute to build national capacity for evidence-based climate communication through innovative training programs and a community of practice that engages educators, scientists, community activists, and communities of color. Nearly two-thirds of Americans talk about climate change only occasionally or not at all, resulting in a lack of action to address one of the most critical issues of our time. The National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation has worked for more than a decade to advance the science and practice of effective public communication around climate change by developing, evaluating, and deploying communications tools that employ both cutting-edge climate science and communication research to increase both knowledge of climate change and a willingness to engage in climate action. The network’s community of practice offers resources, events, and activities to support members’ social, emotional, and intellectual growth, sustaining their long-term commitment to activate the public around climate action. Despite many successes and impact shown through previous programs, gaps still exist in the availability of these messages to communities across the country, and an intentional focus on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion is critical to ensure that communications and proposed solutions are accessible and appropriate for marginalized communities. New lessons connecting justice, equity, diversity and inclusion will be developed and tested by a justice and equity team, as well as outside experts. These new lessons will be included in all training programs, including an existing online course focused on building awareness for climate communicators, and a new virtual and in-person training course for climate communication trainers in the Southeastern United States. Through these training programs, a new training platform, and the support of a new project coordinator, the network will welcome new climate trainers and communicators, while building a stronger community of practice nationwide.