Climate Central

About Climate Central

Climate Central is a nonprofit news organization headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, that analyzes and reports on climate science. Founded in 2008, it is composed of scientists and science journalists who conduct original scientific research on climate change and energy issues and produce multimedia content distributed through its website and media partners. The organization also sponsors classes for meteorologists and supplies climate graphics to television stations, work that has been credited in part for the increase in acceptance of climate change science among local forecasters and their willingness to discuss it in broadcasts. Its official website is climatecentral.org.

Founding and Early Days

Climate Central was founded in 2008 with seed money from The Flora Family Foundation and development funds from the 11th Hour Project, the climate philanthropy led by Wendy Schmidt. The idea had been gestating since 2005, when participants at a climate conference in Aspen resolved to try to improve the quantity and quality of climate coverage in the media. In 2007, Berrien Moore III, who had left his job running the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire, signed on as the group's first operational director. The founding board included Oregon State University's Jane Lubchenco, Princeton's Steven Pacala, and Wendy Schmidt. According to early accounts, Climate Central's first official meeting took place in a Starbucks coffee shop in Princeton between Moore, former Weather Channel climate expert Heidi Cullen, and staff scientist Ben Strauss. The group rapidly expanded from that modest beginning, moving into its Princeton offices the following year.

A Newsroom of Scientists and Journalists

Climate Central's defining feature is its hybrid newsroom, where scientists and journalists collaborate on stories rather than operating in the traditional hierarchy in which the writer and editor have the final say. Early staff included Michael Lemonick, the former Time magazine science correspondent, who described the arrangement as breaking old rules: at Climate Central, he said, he did not own the story but collaborated with scientists to present a story that was reasonable and engaging. Heidi Cullen, formerly of The Weather Channel, was among the organization's first prominent science communicators. The model treats news production as a partnership between scientific expertise and journalistic craft, and the organization does not charge for its stories or services, making its research and reporting freely available to partner news outlets.

Sea Level Rise Research

Sea level rise became one of Climate Central's signature research areas, beginning in 2009. In 2012, its sea level rise program research and maps made national headlines, and the organization was invited to testify in a Senate committee hearing. Its Surging Seas project produced detailed visualizations showing which coastal areas face risks from rising seas and storm surge, giving journalists and the public tools to understand an otherwise abstract threat. Ahead of the 2015 Paris climate talks, the organization published sea level research and visuals that reached an estimated 5,000 news stories. Driven substantially by concerns about sea level rise, the resulting global Paris Agreement included a more ambitious stretch goal than expected: limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The organization's coastal-risk data has since become a standard reference for newsrooms covering climate adaptation.

Climate Matters and TV Weather

Climate Central piloted an initiative to bring climate change to television weather in 2010, and in 2012 it formally launched Climate Matters, a program that provides broadcast meteorologists with localized climate data, graphics, and story ideas. The launch spurred 55 television segments aired by a dozen participating meteorologists. The program grew steadily: in 2018, more than 1,000 television segments included Climate Matters content, and the program expanded beyond the weather desk to all beats and all media. In 2018, the organization also launched WeatherPower, which brings solar and wind power generation data into the daily local forecast. The effort to equip weathercasters with climate science has been credited in part for the increase in acceptance of climate change science among local television forecasters and their growing willingness to share it in their broadcasts, reaching audiences that traditional climate coverage often misses.

World Weather Attribution

In 2014, Climate Central led the creation of World Weather Attribution, an international effort to put a number on the influence of climate change on individual extreme weather events, to do it fast enough to bring results into the news cycle, and to eliminate the false public narrative that individual events could not be tied to warming. In 2015, the collaboration co-authored the first-ever rapid extreme weather attribution analysis. By 2017, it had completed its tenth rapid extreme-event attribution project. In 2016, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences validated the attribution of extreme weather events to climate change in a landmark report, and media narratives increasingly recognized climate links to extreme events. The attribution work gave journalists a scientifically grounded way to answer the question audiences ask after every disaster: did climate change play a role?

Partnership Journalism

In 2019, Climate Central launched its Partnership Journalism program, collaborating with local newsrooms across the country to produce in-depth, science-backed stories. The program pairs the organization's scientists and data journalists with local reporters, combining national-scale climate research with on-the-ground reporting in communities experiencing climate impacts. It reflects Climate Central's long-standing strategy of strengthening local coverage: as local newspapers lost the expertise and resources to cover technical stories, the organization positioned itself as a nonprofit partner supplying the science its partners could not produce alone. The program has supported reporting on topics from extreme heat and flooding to shifting growing seasons and coastal erosion.

Leadership and Staff

As of 2025, Climate Central's chief executive officer and chief scientist is Benjamin Strauss, who joined the organization as a staff scientist at its founding and has led its sea level rise research program. Strauss's research on coastal flooding and sea level rise has been widely cited in scientific literature and media coverage. The organization's staff includes climate scientists, data analysts, journalists, video producers, and meteorologists such as chief meteorologist Shel Winkley, who leads workshops on communicating climate information, and media director Tom Di Liberto. Heidi Cullen, one of the founding science communicators, helped establish the organization's public profile through its first television segment on the PBS NewsHour in 2008. The organization describes itself as employing about 50 people across its research, reporting, and outreach programs.

Funding Model

Climate Central is a nonprofit organization funded by philanthropic foundations and donors rather than by advertising or subscriptions. Its founding support came from The Flora Family Foundation and the 11th Hour Project, and it has since been sustained by a range of foundations interested in climate science, journalism, and public education. Because its budget comes substantially from philanthropy, the organization does not charge partner news outlets for its stories, graphics, or services — a model its founders argued was necessary to rebuild the infrastructure for science coverage as commercial newsrooms cut specialist reporting. The organization publishes information about its funding as part of its nonprofit accountability practices.

Awards and Recognition

Climate Central's work has been recognized with honors including the 2018 Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. Its researchers and communicators have been cited by major news organizations worldwide, and its graphics and data tools — from Surging Seas maps to Climate Matters segments — have become fixtures of American climate coverage. Communication researchers have held up the organization as a model for the future of science journalism: nonprofit partnerships providing independent, syndicated science coverage that local newsrooms could not produce on their own. Nearly two decades after its founding in a Princeton coffee shop, Climate Central remains one of the most influential bridges between climate science and the news media.