Making sense of climate change graphics

Impact

Better graphics don’t just make reports look cleaner—they help people make better choices in the real world. By working with the IPCC to test and improve its visuals, we made complex climate science easier for everyone to understand—from heads of state to city planners to journalists. Clearer graphics mean policies built from IPCC science are helping protect communities, guiding investments that speed up clean energy, and informing local actions that keep people safer.

Challenge

Around the world, policymakers rely on the IPCC for trusted insights into climate science. Yet as the science has grown more complex, so have the graphics used to explain it. When visuals are confusing, even well-intentioned leaders risk misunderstanding the science—or miscommunicating it to others. To keep climate science clear and trusted, the IPCC needed to simplify its graphics and ensure they could be understood quickly and accurately by the people making high-stakes decisions.

Our Plan

With input from climate policy experts around the world, we texted how IPCC graphics were understood and where they fell short. From there, we created a simple checklist and a set of clear guidelines to help authors design visuals that policymakers can understand, trust, and act on.