Teach About Climate Change With These 24 New York Times Graphs

Michael Gonchar, The New York Times Learning Network

This resource is a collection of climate change-related graphs for teachers to use in their classrooms, with links to the source articles and an explanation of how to guide students through reflecting on and learning from the graphs.

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Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

Decide which visualizations to incorporate into instruction, and read the supporting article that included the particular visualization. Decide how that can content may be presented to students, and identify scaffolds for the visualizations if necessary. The resource is a guide for using graphs based on the NYT's "What's Going On In This Graph?" series to guide students in analyzing climate data. More graphs, including more recent ones than those used as examples in the resource, are available from the series URL: [link https://www.nytimes.com/column/whats-going-on-in-this-graph].
The data visualizations were compiled from various NY Times articles, and include research-supported data. Many of the examples in the resource are from 2017 and 2018, but the link to the main page in the article includes current graphs. Comments from expert scientist: Great resource for sparking curiosity. Graphs are aesthetically pleasing and engaging. Ideas on how to use graphs in the classroom are pedagogically appropriate for the early stages of the learning cycle, such as engaging in a new topic. Though many resources are from ~2018, generally the trends shown have continued since. One exception is the projected emissions, which have changed since 2018. The Yale Climate Opinion Survey maps have also shifted since 2018, in small ways that seem significant to me. As a starting place, they could increase data literacy. However, they do not include enough detail on the data and analyses behind them to increase scientific skills. Overall, these graphs are appropriate for use in K12, but in higher ed, they should be paired with more in-depth resources.
An explanation of how to guide students to reflect on and ask questions about what is shown in the graphs is included. It is not a structured lesson plan. The variety of visualizations may be challenging for students who are new to those types of visualizations. The first part of this resource describes effective instructional methods for the use of these visualizations within instruction. This resource may be helpful for ESL students - the visuals help illustrate the concepts covered in the text.
Graphics are high quality and can be downloaded (by right-clicking) or opened in a new window and copying the resulting URL if the teacher wants to show them independent of the article. Clear file links for download are not provided. Instructors could project the graphs from a tablet or other device to see graphs in color without needing to print them.