Attribution Science: Linking Climate Change to Extreme Weather

Positives

• This video helps students understand the level of detail and accuracy involved with climate models.
• It highlights the sound science and global scientific consensus about climate change.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should be familiar with the scientific method.
  

Differentiation

• Government and civics students could discuss the implications of this research with regard to national policies and funding.
• Science and social studies classes could use this when discussing climate action, climate policies, and global climate action.
• Have students read a much older summary report from the IPCC (maybe from the 1990s) that uses different language to describe the certainty of human causation in global warming, so that students can compare the two reports. What do students notice has changed? Does this help explain why bolder actions may not have been taken in the past? What other factors may have been working against bold climate action?
  
• As an extension, have students watch The Cost of Carbon and then review this Table of Solutions to come up with a solid argument for taking climate action, select which actions should be prioritized, and support their argument with data.