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Climate change is a playground for visualization. Yet research and technological innovations in visual communication and data visualization do not account for a substantial part of the world's population: vulnerable audiences with low levels of literacy.
Regions most affected by climate change are not always the areas that receive the most attention. Africa is one example of a region that highlights the need for research in more difficult locations.
While tackling interdependencies among food, energy, and water security is promising, three fundamental challenges to effective operationalization need addressing: the feasibility of science-policy integration, cross-scale inequalities, and path-dependencies in infrastructure and socio-institutional practices.
Successful projection of the distribution of surface temperature change increases our confidence in climate models. Here we evaluate projections of global warming from almost 30 years ago using the observations made during the past half century.
President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015 established the viability of grassroots mobilization modelled on the social movement organization Bold Nebraska. This set a precedent for communities fighting energy projects that threaten natural resources and contribute to climate change.
Protecting science-based policymaking requires engaging the public, not politicians. Cultural institutions and the arts provide non-partisan platforms for communication that can connect scientific climate change data to people's lives.
An international coalition of museums could play a critical role in coordinating more effective public communication on and engagement with climate change.
Negative emissions are necessary to meet ambitious climate targets, but in order to achieve these we need both technological advances and an economic environment that promotes such activity.
Human activity is changing Earth's climate. Now that this has been acknowledged and accepted in international negotiations, climate research needs to define its next frontiers.
