Climate change offers one of the greatest challenges yet faced by society and scientists. The scientific consensus is clear that climate change is occurring, its pace is accelerating, its impacts on human society will be largely negative, and it is mainly caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, despite strong scientific evidence for the enormous challenges that society could face, scientists' attempts to disseminate that evidence beyond their peers has largely fallen flat. Indeed, in today's media world of blogs, YouTube video clips, and sound-bites, confusion over the scientific reality of climate change frequently dominates the discourse in classrooms and communities. Some of the unique challenges presented by climate change education include the complexity of the problem, the need for an interdisciplinary perspective, and the fact that scientists lack the training and incentives to explain their work in an accessible manner.

We will work to overcome these challenges by combining new and ongoing initiatives to create an approach to climate change education in which students gain an understanding of science and of the media through which they access information. Our goals are to: - Use NASA data and visualizations to develop new approaches to integrating science and media through project-based learning and media documentation at the high school and university levels. - Reach beyond educational institutions by engaging the broader community through dissemination of media produced by students about climate change science and NASA's unique contributions in this area. - Enhance existing NASA-supported climate change web resources with videos produced by students. - Provide resources and social networking e-learning tools to launch online video-based conversations about climate change science and solutions, integrated with resources that are currently available and under development.

We plan to integrate the following program elements at the higher education, high school, and professional development levels in order to achieve our objectives: - Development of new undergraduate- and graduate-level interdisciplinary courses and course modules in climate change at UMass Lowell that combine inquiry-based exploration of NASA's data and visualization tools, leveraging the Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET) and the EarthLabs climate change module under development by co-PI Ledley (TERC). - Development of a new high school summer program in which high school students produce videos and animations on climate change science using CEA's state-of-the-art Media Arts Studio, lead by Co-PI Brisk. Students will learn about climate change science through exploration of NASA products via EarthLabs and EET and through on-camera interviews with UMass Lowell faculty who are experts on climate change. - Dissemination of edited collections of student-produced videos through institutional events, community events, and television broadcasts. - Enhancement of NASA-funded EarthLabs module by providing feedback on their efficacy and usability, and providing relevant video content that can be integrated into modules. - Development of comprehensive online professional development resources and social media tools that enable teachers to inexpensively incorporate video into climate change education curriculum and enable their students to join an online conversation on climate change science and solutions.

We believe this project will open new avenues for communicating the complex science of climate change to students and the broader public. Videos produced by students will naturally incorporate their peers' questions, concerns, and perspective on this complex problem and the products of this work can be disseminated extremely broadly and used to enhance existing resources on climate change and, more generally, STEM, education. These features are key to the successful education of both students and the broader public in climate change science.