Special issue  

Public perception of climate change impacts on environmental systems is primarily driven by exposure to different forms of media. Here, we inspect the ever-growing public discourse around climate change over the last 30 years and assess perceptions gained from the largest media franchise worldwide, Pokémon. We highlight the growth of the acknowledgement of anthropogenic change, keeping track with the step-by-step increases in public exposure to climate change.

Climate change can often seem rather remote especially when the discussion is about global averages which appears to have little relevance to local experiences. But, those global changes are already affecting people, even if they don’t fully realise it, and effective communication of this issue is critical. We use long observations and well-understood physical principles to highlight how global emissions influence local flood risk in one river basin in the UK.

To allow more effective use of climate science this work proposes and evaluates open R-code that deploys a measure of how natural hazards (e.g. extreme wind, flooding) co-occur, obtainable from scientific research, that is usable in practice without restricted data (climate or risk) being exposed. The approach can be applied to hazards in various sectors (e.g. road, rail, telecommunications).

Scientific research around water security in the Peruvian Andes rarely includes local perspectives or approaches which directly engage with local communities. Here we explore some key lessons learnt through a research project which collected perspectives on water quality issues in Peru via an app. Our research discusses the importance and challenges of engaging local participants, use of technology for data collection, and the need for integrating local perspectives with scientific observations.