“Climate Change for kids” article collection

A large effort of communication has been conducted around the release of the latest IPCC assessment report. One project, initiated by Chris Jones (lead author of Chapter 4 of Working Group I on “Future global climate”), and Sophie Berger and Robin Matthews (Technical Support Unit for Working Group I), was to explain the basic concepts related to climate and climate change to children. They invited fellow IPCC lead authors and early career researchers interested in science communication to participate in a special collection of the journal “Frontiers for Young Minds” about Climate Change.

This journal is aimed at children of two different age categories : 8 to 11 years and 12 to 15 years. The originality is that the articles are “peer-reviewed” by the target audience (children !) to teach them to ask critical questions. This also leads to a very quick reality check for the authors to find out if the article is actually written in a comprehensible manner.

In the end, around a dozen of articles have been published. Two of them were co-authored by Clara Burgard, postdoc at IGE, and written for children from 8 to 11 years. “It was a fun writing (and drawing) exercise and I enjoyed discussing with co-authors how to break difficult concepts into very simple words and metaphors”, she says, “but it is also quite a challenge to define one core message on which to focus and leave out non-essential information. I learned a lot in the process !”

Links to the articles :
What Do We Mean by “Climate” and “Climate Change” ? (Copyright © 2022 Regoto, Burgard and Jones)
What Is Causing Our Climate To Change So Quickly Now ? (Copyright © 2022 Nogherotto, Burgard and Jones)

Scientific contact :
Clara Burgard