How to Turn an IPCC Finding into a Story People Can Use

Picture a town deciding how to prepare its schools for hotter summers. The options include shading, changes to buildings and different uses for particular spaces. Each has a cost, an owner and a different effect on the school day.

Now picture opening that meeting with a graph of global temperature change. The graph can be accurate and relevant and still leave the people in the room to build the bridge between a planetary trend and their schools.

Building that bridge is the communicator’s job.

The town here is hypothetical. A real decision would need local evidence on exposure, buildings, vulnerability and how well each measure performs. The example shows why communicating a global finding takes more than cutting technical words.

Keep the scientific finding intact

Take this sentence from the IPCC’s 2023 Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, section B.1.

“Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence).” ¹

It states a relationship. More warming brings more intense hazards, several at once. The confidence rating is part of the statement and travels with it.

The sentence does not identify the best investment for a particular school, establish the cause of one recent local event or measure the exposure of a specific business. Each of those questions needs more evidence.

In the IPCC’s calibrated language, confidence is a qualitative judgement based on the strength of the evidence and the level of agreement across it. It is different from a numerical probability attached to a likelihood statement. Turning “high confidence” into a guessed percentage changes the meaning. ²

Before adapting a finding, write down what must survive, meaning the relationship it describes, its scope and the strength of the assessment. Everything else can change inside those boundaries.

Decide who needs to do something with it

A climate finding can enter many conversations, and each audience holds a different responsibility and a different power to act.

A council may be allocating a budget. Residents may be deciding which proposals they support and what local experience they want considered. A business may be deciding whether an asset or operating plan needs a closer look.

Name that decision before choosing the opening. Without it, the message tends to become a mix of scientific explanation, moral urgency and several unrelated requests.

The three drafts below are illustrations. They stay conditional where local evidence would be needed, and they do not describe a real town, policy or company.

For a council, connect the finding to a decision sequence

A version for the people allocating a school-estate budget might read like this.

The school buildings we improve now will be used in a changing climate. The IPCC finds that additional warming intensifies multiple hazards. For this budget decision, we need to establish which schools face material heat exposure, how their buildings perform and which measures offer the greatest benefit within the available funds. A local assessment should give us that comparison before we commit to a particular intervention.

The global finding explains why changing conditions belong in the plan. The next step names the local information needed to choose between investments.

Several things stay open, including what the assessment will find, which intervention is justified and how competing priorities will be weighed. That is a more credible basis for a policy conversation than presenting a global finding as a finished local business case.

For residents, make room for experience and influence

A public version can start closer to everyday life.

Think about the parts of a school day that become difficult in hot weather, the classroom, the playground and the journey home. The council is considering how the school estate should adapt. Climate evidence gives a reason to look at future conditions. Families and staff can help identify where the buildings and spaces already cause problems, and their experience should inform the assessment while the options are still open.

The human detail gives people a way in and a role they can reasonably hold. Residents are invited to contribute experience, while technical assessment and accountable public decisions keep their place.

A real consultation would also need to say which choices remain open, who can change them, how input will be weighed and when people will hear the result. Inviting participation after the decision is fixed would contradict the message.

The opening should fit the community being addressed. Language, working hours, trust in institutions and access to the consultation all affect whether an invitation is usable.

For a business, connect the finding to operational exposure

A version for a company weighing a facility investment might read like this.

This facility will have to operate in conditions beyond those it was designed for. The IPCC’s finding gives us a reason to test the plan against changing hazards. It cannot tell us the exposure of this site. Before approving the investment, we should examine the relevant regional projections, the site and workforce, dependencies such as water and power, and the consequences of interruption. That assessment should shape the options and their costs.

The reader is asked to commission or use an assessment inside an investment process they already run. The message meets them at a responsibility they already hold, understanding the conditions an asset will operate in.

A stronger story cannot supply missing exposure data or justify an unsupported return. It can make clear why the information matters, which decision depends on it and who should take the next step.

Use local detail to explain relevance

A global finding and a local scene do different work. The finding describes a broad relationship. The scene makes a possible consequence easier to picture and discuss.

Keep the link between them explicit. If a local example is real, give its source and limits. If it is illustrative, say so. If the argument is about climate change’s influence on a particular event, use evidence suited to that attribution question.

Our work on Climate Blueprint, a documentary series about climate resilience, sits on the real side of that line. The trilogy includes a film on Barbados, so a global subject arrives through one named place. It launched at ODI Global on SIDS Day during London Climate Action Week in June 2026, and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley spoke after the screening of the Barbados film. We contributed the key visual, the poster, film elements, the investor presentation and the website.

This matters most when a story is vivid. People remember the person or the place more readily than the qualification attached to it, so keep the qualification close enough that the example stays accurate when someone repeats it.

The communication handbook produced for IPCC authors by Climate Outreach encourages them to connect with audiences, tell stories and communicate what is known while handling uncertainty carefully. ³ The opportunity is to apply that practice precisely to the audience and decision in front of you. Our piece on why climate messaging fails looks at what happens when it is applied loosely.

Make the next step proportionate

After drafting, check the request against the evidence. Ask whether the material justifies acting now, gathering one particular piece of information or comparing options. Check that the reader has the authority to do what you are asking. Name the cost or constraint that could reasonably make them disagree.

A compelling account can make a choice easier to understand without making it easy to resolve. Climate decisions involve money, values, trade-offs and institutions as well as evidence. The communication should help people see those conditions clearly enough to take part.

In the school example, a good outcome might be an agreed assessment brief and a date to review the options. That is a real step. It connects a global finding to work someone can authorise, check and carry forward.

Brighter Future’s science communication work starts with the evidence, the reader and the decision the material needs to support.

Sources and further reading

1. IPCC, Climate Change 2023, Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, B.1
2. IPCC, AR6 Working Group I, Chapter 1, Box 1.1, Treatment of Uncertainty and Calibrated Uncertainty Language
3. Climate Outreach and IPCC, Principles for Effective Communication and Public Engagement on Climate Change
4. Brighter Future, Why Climate Messaging Fails

First published 6 February 2024 by Aaron C. Leaman and Keegan Sentner, revised and restored at its original address. The town, school, residents and business are hypothetical.