NOAA/NSF:  "Climate Literacy: Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts" 

    Environmental literacy is integral to NOAAs mission: All of NOAAs long-term goals ultimately depend on the public’s capacity to understand and react to Earth system science and ecosystem conditions. A better-informed public will provide improved environmental stewardship and will acquire, use, and respond to NOAAs information services and forecasts in more effective ways. Given the central role of environmental literacy to NOAAs long-term effectiveness, NOAA places a high priority on formal and informal education efforts leveraging NOAAs distinctive scientific, technical, and operational expertise. Key requirements include: Ensuring coordination between developers of educational products and those partners responsible for establishing educational standards; Overcoming barriers to influencing formal educational curricula that exist because of education standards that do not adequately reflect Earth system science; and deploying strategic approaches to environmental literacy, as articulated in the NOAA Education Plan and Policy, which recognize the multi-generational, long-term nature of change in public attitudes and actions.

"Climate Literacy: Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts" was developed with input from recent workshops and discussions; this guide reflects the current efforts in defining climate literacy. It is inspired in part by the work conducted by AAAS Project 2061, federal science agencies, educators and other organizations to identify essential principles and fundamental concepts for Ocean Literacy and related work in other areas of Earth systems science education. References associated with particular key understandings are from AAAS Project 2061 benchmarks and other citations.

As a result of the "FRAMEWORK FOR CLIMATE & WEATHER EDUCATION" Workshop, cosponsored by NOAA and AAAS Project 2061 and the "Workshop on Atmospheric Science and Climate Literacy" recently held on November 27 - 29, 2007 by UCAR, AGU, and CIRES, funded by NSF and NOAA, the second and final draft of the "Climate Literacy: Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts" has been developed.

 See "Climate Literacy: Essiential Principles and Fundamental Concepts - Education Plan"  for further informaiton.