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Communicating climate change is an important task: climate communication research shows that there are many different barriers to understanding and acting on climate change. Many climate communication strategies, focus on creating connections between the reader and the tangible impacts of climate change on themselves or local communities. On WikiProject climate change, we recommend that editors start with some of the light-weight or intermediate tasks below, as you get familiar with editing about climate change.

In particular, we recommend starting on tasks that are not heavily focused on the science of climate change. Many of Wikipedia's needs don't require deep understanding of science or technology. For instance, Wikipedia has major gaps in terms of covering adapatation to climate change and the psychological and sociological aspects of the climate change issue.

For more, generally bigger, tasks, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change#To-do


What are some good ways to get started?

Add references or information about climate change

The easiest way to start is to add a citation to an existing article. If you are looking for good places to start, we recommend the “citation hunt” tool. Citation hunt suggests articles with content that are lacking a citation.

How to add a citation?

  1. Let the Citation Hunt links above suggest a citation needed statements for you, and find one that you think you can research
  2. Go to the article, find the statement
  3. Click edit in the section header
  4. Add the source using the Cite button
  5. Remove the "Citation needed" template (highlight and backspace in Visual Editor, or remove the template which adds that tag (it looks like {{citation needed}} ))
  6. Save the page.

Note: for climate change, these citations can sometimes be very technical. Skip the articles that you don’t think you can fix.

Cite the IPCC reports or NASEM reports

The IPCC publishes the authoritative summary of climate change’s impacts on the world. It is a systematic review of the best scholarship on climate change. If you haven’t tried reading the reports, they are very easy to read. However, citing the reports is a bit complicated. If you need help, there are preformatted citations on English Wikipedia.

Additionally, Wikimedia DC recently ran an edit-a-thon with the National Academies of Sciences in the United States. You can find a list of suggested edits from some of their reports at the editathon page.

Help fix the backlog

There are hundreds of articles in the scope of the Wikiproject, that are part of the Wikipedia:Backlog. Help us address other issues identified in the Backlog for Climate Change articles identified by Bambot. Note: most of these articles are focused on the science of climate change, so many of these tasks are not for beginners.

Write about climate change in your city or other region

A lot more people read the articles about specific geographies than the general articles about climate change. By adding more contextually relevant information you can help connect climate change, which can be an abstract concept, with people’s sense of place.

For example, at the time of writing, the article about Miami doesn’t mention global warming at all. Yet, a quick google search shows that Miami is one of the most vulnerable cities in the United States, and the Wikipedia article is extensive. The Miami article should summarize this information and connect with the article about climate change in Florida.

Steps for contributing:

  • Find your local community’s Wikipedia article.
  • Search within the article for the concept of “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” (Ctrl+F in Chrome).
  • If there is no mention, go to the “climate”, “geography” or "environment" section of the article.
  • In a separate tab, search Google or Google news, and search for articles describing the impact of climate change.
  • Read the piece about how your local community will be affected by climate change, and add a summary to the article
  • Make sure to cite the source by clicking “Cite” in the visual editor, and generating a citation.
  • Click Save!


Cover Climate Impacts by Industry

Each form of human activity which includes industry or transportation has environmental impacts:

  • Find articles which describe industry and other human activity and add information about the climate impacts. Categories for these industries can be found at: Category:Industries.
  • Write about individual discrete events or infrastructure projects that are heavily influenced by climate change, drawing the connections. There is a significant opportunity to explore these topics as news happens. In many countries, major infrastructure projects or manufacturing facilities are being proposed that could have a significant impact on emissions one way or the other, e.g. oil pipelines or public transit expansion. Consider improving articles on these projects.


Contribute to a “climate change” by geography article

Moreover, different countries, regions and geographies are going to be affected by climate change differently. Working to expand the articles listed in Climate Change by Country or Region is a really valuable task.

This is an intermediate editing activity, and may be harder than just adding citations or expanding your local article.

If you need hints on how to structure these articles, we have written a structure in our style guide.

Communicate effected underrepresented by industry or geography

Climate topics and environmental impacts of industries frequently disproportionately effect groups without political, social or economic power. Climate communication research highlights the importance of telling human-centered and human-health centered stories about climate change, and the Climate Justice movement advocate for integrated solutions that account for how climate change, its impacts, and its potential solutions could reinforce positions power and privilege. Highlighting the human and social impacts of these environmental issues is an important part of building effective awareness about the impacts of climate change.

To do these we recommend:

  1. Identify a environmentally problematic or carbon intensive industry
  2. Search for news stories covering the human impact and health impacts of that industry.
  3. Represent that impact for community members in a) the geographic communities related to that topic, b) core articles about the industries, or c) specific industrial sites, such as coalfields or oil refineries

See for example these edits about the human displacement effects of coal field fires in Jharia India or this edit describing effects of polutants from PetroChemical plants in St. James Parish Louisiana.

For further ideas, consider editing topics identified by the Climate justice task force.

Images and media

Climate change directly affects real peoples lives. We recommend approaching this kind of communication with human-centered story telling similar to the principles described at: https://climatevisuals.org/7-climate-visuals-principles


Here are some places to start for finding the images:

Improve topical coverage

Write a Biography about Women Environmentalists

If you are up for a challenge, or are an experienced editor you might try creating a full Wikipedia article. There are several lists of environmentalists and climate change:

The global environmental movement and climate science have a number of notable women leaders. Want to help translate articles about these women? WMF research extended the gap finder tool to help the community doing the WikiGap Challenge to find Women biography articles to translate.

Here are some links to get you started:

Use the WMF Research piloted “Gap Finder” to find Global Warming-related articles into your language. Below we have seeded links that should help you find translations.

Here are some links to get you started:


Write about climate change in the arts

This community knows a lot about how to work at a global scale quickly and reliably to achieve stunning results. It’s a skillset that the rest of the world, that the UN, that this museum, that humanity needs… My ask of you is to think of us… and to think of what you can add to this work on the global goals.

Michael Peter Edson, Wikimania 2019

Write about sustainable architecture

Biology, agriculture, and earth sciences

  • Improve an article in Category:Climate change and agriculture
  • Improve an article on bioenergy, biofuel, and biomass (which could perhaps use some merging).
  • Improve an article on the role of trees and forests in carbon sequestration
  • In an article on a species or other biological taxon, describe the effects of current climate change and the anticipated effects of future climate change.
  • Newsworthy events like environmental disasters, frequently have in depth coverage -- expanding these articles to include mention of their relationship to Climate change and Climate activism increases awareness among readers of that connection

Connecting sports to Climate Change

  • Write about the effects of extreme heat on summer sporting events
  • Write about the effects of climate change on ski resorts and winter sport

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change/Recommended sources

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