The US government last month released the third National Climate Assessment — a report on climate-change impacts across the United States — with Canadian Katharine Hayhoe as a lead author. Hayhoe, who is director of the Texas Tech University Climate Science Center in Lubbock, describes her evolution as a science communicator.

Did you set out to study climate change?

No. I double-majored in astronomy and physics at the University of Toronto in Canada, but my interests shifted after I took a course on climate change. I was shocked by the magnitude of the problem as well as by the fact that nonlinear fluid dynamics is at the core of climate models. All of a sudden, I realized I'd been developing the skills necessary to study an urgent global problem. After getting my master's degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I decided to become a consultant to help industry, government and non-profit clients to assess the impacts of climate change.

Did any consulting job alter your career?

Yes, I started working on the impact of climate change on the ecology of the Great Lakes region with funding from the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Ecological Society of America in Washington DC. It was an eye-opener to find that ecologists were using 20-year-old climate projections, which were considered obsolete in atmospheric science; I realized how huge the gap was between climate science and all other areas of science. Working on the resulting report, Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region, was a pivotal moment for me because it clarified the importance of generating high-resolution information and translating it into something that ecologists and water managers could use. I became frustrated by the limitations of the available tools, so I decided to return to academia.

How did you end up in Texas?

While on sabbatical from Notre Dame University in Indiana, my husband, a linguistics professor and pastor, was invited to Lubbock to serve as an interim pastor at a local church. Texas Tech University had an atmospheric-sciences programme, so we decided to move, and I got a grant-supported research-professor position. Climate change isn't a popular topic in some US communities, especially in conservative states, so it was stressful to move to a place where we knew that at least some people in the community would be strongly opposed to what I do. But embracing the unexpected has been enormously positive for my career. I later went back to the University of Illinois to earn my PhD so I would be eligible for tenure at Texas Tech.

How did you become a voice for climate adaptation?

Soon after we moved to Texas, I was invited to speak at a women's group about climate change. The questions I got, such as “How do you know this isn't just a natural cycle?” and “Aren't the ice caps on Mars shrinking too, so it's the Sun's effect?”, challenged me to find answers. Shortly thereafter, I started getting invitations to speak for other groups, and my husband's congregation began asking questions. Before long, we co-wrote a book, A Climate for Change. Writing this book felt like I was exposing my world views as a Christian. I believe the idea that scientists are completely objective is a myth. The only legitimate way to do science is to admit our views and, where appropriate, share them with others.

How did you approach the US National Climate Assessment?

We aimed to make sure the science could be communicated. We wanted to make the best-available science accessible to every person who is interested. So we included videos of scientists explaining climate change and answered common, specific questions, such as why we think it's human-caused instead of a part of a natural cycle. I think those efforts helped us to achieve the high level of interest that this report received compared to our past assessments.