Climate Exchange

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HKO also organized student project competitions to

enhance students’ understanding of climate change and

its impacts. Furthermore, a team of professional mete-

orologists from HKO has been formed to deliver talks

on climate change for schools and to give free public

lectures. In the past five years, the HKO Speaker Team

on Climate Change has delivered over 250 talks with

most encouraging feedback.

Stakeholder engagement

HKO organizes or supports local and regional workshops

on climate change and climate prediction for the benefit of

operational meteorologists, students, government depart-

ments, NGOs, and the business and engineering sectors

among others. HKO also joined forces with the meteoro-

logical authorities in neighbouring Guangdong province

and Macao and a major bank, to stage a large-scale exhibi-

tion – ‘Climate is changing, act now!’ – to enhance public

understanding of the causes of climate change, its impacts

and what we can do to mitigate its effects.

The way forward

Looking ahead, along with the implementation of the

World Meteorological Organization Global Framework

for Climate Services, HKO will continue to develop and

enhance climate services to meet local and regional needs

through user and stakeholder engagement and a sector-

by-sector approach. It will continue to focus on promoting

awareness and use of climatic information, developing

channels of communication to deliver information to users

in comprehensible formats, enhancing the skills and effec-

tiveness of climate forecasts with emphasis on high impact

climate events as well as quantifying and communicating

uncertainties of the climate predictions.

Delivering climate change messages to the public

Climate change has been a hot topic of discussion across the world

in recent years. Besides conducting scientific studies, HKO has been

working proactively to keep all sectors of the public informed about

the latest scientific basis and research findings on climate change,

and to raise awareness of climate change impacts. HKO has pack-

aged relevant information on climate change into comprehensible

messages that strike a chord with the layman, and has partnered

with different organizations to communicate the information to the

public through various channels and activities.

Mobilizing the media

HKO officers proactively engage the media to promulgate informa-

tion on climate change to the public through press conferences and

feature interviews in newspapers, radio and TV programmes. HKO

meteorologists have also taken part in the filming of the climate

change TV documentary ‘Sinking Islands’ and the documentary

‘Sixteen Degrees’ shown on TV, public buses and the Internet to

explain the scientific basis and potential impacts of climate change

both locally and worldwide.

One-stop climate change webpage

Since 2007, HKO has launched and maintained a climate change

webpage on its website for public access. The webpage serves to

provide the public with a one-stop shop for information on local

and global climate change.

School and public education on climate change

HKO has produced an educational package on climate change for

free distribution to schools and libraries in Hong Kong. Presented

in Chinese and English, the package includes an animated cartoon

DVD, a cartoon booklet, PowerPoint presentations and list of

reference materials. The package is very well received by schools,

non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academic institutions.

Source: HKO

HKO’s climate change public education and outreaching activities

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