Resource Refresher: Climate Science 101

It’s easy to get lost in the climate change conversation. A million voices clamor on smartphones, televisions, and car speakers. Our job as journalists is to wade through all that noise, pick out the facts without compromising their complexity, and present them to a discerning audience.

Often, we have to do it quickly—the story is developing, our editors are pinging, and experts aren’t returning our calls. So it’s important to have a solid understanding of the basics.

Even when we believe we’ve been over it a thousand times, it pays to think critically about what we actually know. And perhaps more importantly, what our audiences know—what information they need. Something that may seem like common sense in our own circles might not translate so readily for everyone. And we might miss the climate angles that aren’t being explored—gaps in knowledge that need to be filled.

Those gaps are well-documented.

According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, in 2021, only about one-third of Americans said they hear about climate change on an occasional basis or hear about it from the press at least once a week. Only a third of people in the U.S. hear anyone talk about climate change, even occasionally. Yet nearly four-fifths of Americans are interested in hearing more about climate change. That’s a huge gap between what people want and what they get—and for newsrooms it’s a great opportunity.

Sometimes we need a refresher about the difference between weather and climate, what the impacts of climate change are, what or who is responsible, and what can be done about it all.

All of these facts build on each other, and all journalists need a basic understanding in order to give our readers the most accurate and helpful information.

That’s where our Climate Science 101 page comes in. We asked one of the best climate scientists and communicators out there, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe , Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy , to write a handy guide for journalists.

Give it a read and let us know what you think. Did anything on there surprise you? What did you find helpful? And more importantly, what questions do you still have about climate change and your beat?