EarthNow Website Celebrates First Year!
October 2012 will mark the one-year anniversary of EarthNow’s website launch. The EarthNow project allows NOAA Science On a Sphere (SOS) institutions to go beyond the scientific facts to create meaningful visitor experiences about weather and climate connections.
EarthNow website screenshot
The SOS is one of the fastest growing museum and science center exhibits worldwide, with nearly 100 installations. Few other exhibits captivate and mystify audiences in the way SOS does. Harnessing audience excitement about the science, especially climate change and real-time weather, however, has been challenging for docents.
CIMSS, in collaboration with the NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, regularly updates the blog-style website, providing a central location for SOS presenters to find timely weather and climate stories to speak about how current events affect and are affected by global change. Along with these stories, the website also provides relevant, visually appealing SOS-formatted datasets and animations with appropriate annotations, leading to easier comprehension by presenters and the public.
NOAA Science On a Sphere, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL
Example EarthNow Visualization; August 2012 vs. 2007 Minimum Sea Ice Comparison on YouTube.
Example EarthNow Visualization; Labeled Sea Surface Temperatures with bathymetry.
After piloting a docent-training program this summer at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, Maryland, the EarthNow team is excitedly working to develop partnerships with other key SOS institutions to further develop an EarthNow presentation-training curriculum to be used by the entire Science On a Sphere Collaborative Network.
Also, don’t forget about SSEC’s very own 3D Globe. It may not be as big as a Science On a Sphere, but it’s a great way to showcase spectacular 3D animations of the Earth and its systems, as well as the power of satellites. Over the past year, over a thousand students came to our building to see our 3D Globe!
Follow EarthNow:
On Twitter
On Facebook (NOAA Science On a Sphere page)
On YouTube
EarthNow RSS
submitted by Patrick Rowley