As part of its Coastal Climate Change Adaptation Initiative (CCCAI), New York Sea Grant (NYSG) organized a two-day workshop for 40 Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE), New York and Lake Champlain Sea Grant Extension and NOAA/National Weather Service staff on how to integrate climate science into Extension’s everyday education outreach.

“This in-depth training provided a comprehensive overview on the climate system, how it may be changing, how these changes could potentially affect Extension audiences and some recommended guidelines for how Extension educators could communicate climate science information to their audiences,” said workshop co-organizer David MacNeill of New York Sea Grant’s Oswego office.

Cornell University faculty, Cornell Cooperative Extension staff, and National Weather Service and Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) meteorologists presented both the science of climate, weather, and water systems, and how to communicate climate-related impacts through easily-understood, fact-based messages of relevance to stakeholder groups. NRCC Director Dr. Arthur DeGaetano said, “We are interested in creating new models and products based on needs identified by Extension and stakeholders.”

NYSG Coastal Processes and Facilities Specialist Jay Tanski collaborated with DeGaetano to develop an East Coast Winter Storms website. At the August workshop, Tanski presented information on climate-related impacts on New York’s marine coast. Said Tanski, “There is still a great deal of uncertainty about the impact climate change will have on the coast. In terms of the physical processes, it won’t be creating new problems that we haven’t seen before, but it will exacerbate existing problems that we are already facing.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Sea Grant Program funded the CCCAI workshop and an April train-the-trainer workshop for NOAA’s North Atlantic Regional Team and Sea Grant Extension educators.

—Kara Lynn Dunn