Teaching about Local Climates, Global Climate, and Climatic Change

Abstract

The basics of climate must be understood to have a climate literate populace. Understanding climatic change is a wicked problem. This work identifies three foundational content challenges to climate and climate change education, discusses them thoroughly, and offers graphics and conceptual models to address this content in the classroom. The three concepts covered are: 1) conflation between weather and climate, 2) understanding the differences among spatial and temporal scales of climate, and 3) distinguishing between natural climate variability and human-driven climatic change. The goal of this work is to offer science-based pathways for teaching important concepts in climate change education.

Keywords:

• Wicked problems
• climate
• climatic change
• climate and climate change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Tabor

Lisa Tabor is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Northern Iowa. She teaches both geography and secondary social studies education classes, and she loves it. Lisa mainly does research in geography education, emphasizing professional skills and teaching climate change but is always open to a good opportunity outside of her specialty. When not teaching or reading and writing the literature, she is daydreaming, camping, or playing with her beloved dogs.

John Harrington

John Harrington, Jr. is an independent scholar and professional geographer. He retired from Kansas State University in 2018 as Professor Emeritus after a career that included more than 4 decades of teaching, research, and service. He served as Head of the Department of Geography at Kansas State from 1999-2005. Dr. Harrington has research interests in climatology, climate change, coupled natural and human aspects of global change, applied geography, GIScience, geographic thought, and geography education. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4066-0735