Introduction—Climate Science Literacy: A State of the Knowledge Overview

Abstract

What is climate literacy? How is defined? By what metrics can it be assessed? How will we know when it has been achieved? Is climate literacy a static state or a dynamic realism? These are some of the many questions that have been circulating among the climate literacy community over the last two years in such fora as the Climate Literacy Network, the AAG (Association of American Geographers) Climate Literacy Initiative, and among colleagues who have worked on the Essential Principles of Climate Literacy. This special issue stems from the need to address some of these burning questions, to highlight the widespread misconceptions about climate science in general, and to present successful strategies from which we can learn as we strive toward a climate-literate citizenry. In the quest to achieve literacy, we should first pause to quantify what is meant by this term. Is it the accumulation of content, understanding, the ability to create new knowledge, skills acquisition, transferability to a new situation or location, critical thinking, decision-making, the recognition of bias, or the change in behavior due to a deeper appreciation of an issue or concept? I would argue that literacy encompasses all of the above. Without their realizing it, so would my students. In an interesting exercise with my Climatology class, I began the semester by asking them to define climate literacy. Their responses revolved around individual atmospheric or land-surface processes and skills including weather patterns, weather map interpretation, global warming, the role of ocean currents, landscapes, continentality, and climate change. By the end of the semester, after having been exposed to the various tenets of dynamic, synoptic, descriptive, applied, and historical climatology, their responses had coalesced around the following: climate literacy as the understanding of the “interconnectedness” of patterns at varying spatial and temporal scales, the “complexity” of the interactions over these scales, the role that humans exert, and the ability to “act accordingly” having understood the above. It is important to realize that not everyone will have the benefit of having taken a climate-related class as part of their undergraduate studies. This therefore begs the question: How will climate literacy be translated to other parts of the formal education arena, and more importantly to the informal aspects of society? This question is not a trivial one, nor are its answers easy to elucidate. The first three papers in this issue are devoted to this larger question of addressing science and climate science literacy. In “The Role of Narrative and Geospatial Visualization in Fostering Climate Literate Citizens,” Niepold et al. (2008) argue for the use of a collaborative approach among U.S. Federal agencies to bring their