Communication
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The importance of weather forecasting for our economy, safety, and well-being has been growing strongly in recent years, for example due to the increasing use of renewable energy and due to a growing frequency of extreme events. Still basic research and development in weather forecasting currently do not receive the same attention as other areas of atmospheric sciences such as climate change or air pollution. The numbers of students in most meteorology degrees remain rather low. Reasons for this include the facts that weather research is often linked to national weather services – rather than to universities – or is even trivialized at the level of media presentation of weather information. In addition, the usefulness of the increasingly sophisticated ensemble prediction systems developed in recent decades is known only little in the general public and probabilistic forecast information are often misunderstood or misinterpreted.
The breadth and long-term funding for W2W is a prime opportunity to improve the standing of our discipline – within the scientific (mostly atmospheric science) community, in relation to weather services, in the perception of the general public, and among the next generation of weather researchers.
Dissemination ensures that the results of the research developed in W2W are disseminated and exploited through communication and transfer into other research settings. Scientific publications and conference presentations are major means of dissemination. A quarterly newsletter aims to inform the international community about W2W's activities, events and achievements.
Outreach ensures that the results of the research and their broader impacts are communicated to a larger audience involving the general public, e.g., in the form of a flyer describing W2W activities.
A dissemination team has been set up to implement the W2W Dissemination and Outreach Strategy.
Click on the links below to learn more about the dissemination team, the W2W dissemination and outreach activities.
