My Climate

Today we receive information on climate change from many sources, often in a scientific, unclear, confusing and detached way. People have there own views and understanding of what climate change is and if it is affecting them. One goal would be to collect these perceptions, both past present and future, to produce something tangible that ordinary people can own to stand alongside scientific information to help them realise that climate change is happening everywhere. In a time when people are saying, “The last two summers have been really cold and miserable” or “I can’t remember a time when there were so many storms” The proposition is to create a website that can record people’s perceptions of the changes in climate where they are and show them how they relate to the realities of climate change both locally and throughout the world. Something that can put people’s thoughts on how the climate is changing where they are into a wider, visually understandable context.

User Journey

Visitors to the site will be greeted with a map of the world they can zoom in on and navigate to find people who have recorded their perceptions of climate where they live. There will be clear graphs and information to interpret their perceptions with the reality of climate change. After visitors have viewed other’s entries from around the world, they can enter their local climate information for today and how they perceived it 10 years ago. The website would ask them simple questions like ‘Has the temperate got hotter or colder?’ or ‘Is there more or less rain than 10 years ago?’ as well as their location. After users have entered their initial observations, they will then be presented with easy to understand graphs showing their perceptions versus the reality of the issue. Their location and entry would then be added to the world map for others to view. To give longevity to the site and to retain user’s interest in the project, widgets and applications would be used to allow users to update their climate status regularly. This could be done via sites like Facebook, Bebo and iGoogle, so users can continue to contribute, and be a function to show others they are thinking about climate change. This would also allow long-term collection of perceptual data. Finally, a function on the site and on widgets of displaying the world’s current climate status. Are things better or worse today? A snapshot of current global climate status would be shown. Events like hurricanes, droughts and fires would impact this, allowing users to see a direct correlation between these events and climate change. A part of the site would show long-term changes in collective global perceptions.

How do we get people to the site?

1. Get key members of the climate change community to sign up to using the site – word of mouth in the community.

2. Get celebrities who support the need for action on climate change to sign up to the site. – We would have a link on the home page to allow users to view celebrity’s entries quickly before they have to sign up.

3. Leverage the charity’s status to obtain free publicity, both in print and online around the launch of the site.

4. Get climate change presenters to promote the site during their presentations.

5. Post about the site on relevant blogs, forums and news sites