Climate Change Science Is Geography: Why It Must Be Taught at the K–12 Level

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Additional informationFundingThis research was funded by NASA Grant 80NSSC20K1268 and an internal grant from the UGA Vice Provost.Notes on contributorsMarshall ShepherdDr. J. Marshall Shepherd is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia and Director of its Atmospheric Sciences Program. Dr. Shepherd was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS). Prior to his work in academia, he spent 12 years as a scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and was Deputy Project Scientist of the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission. Dr. Shepherd is the host of The Weather Channel’s Weather Geeks Podcast and a senior contributor to Forbes magazine. In 2022, he was selected SEC Professor of the Year. In 2021, Dr. Shepherd was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the only member of the University of Georgia faculty to ever achieve this trifecta. He has received numerous awards, including the 2004 White House PECASE Award, the Captain Planet Foundation Protector of the Earth Award, the 2019 AGU Climate Communication Prize, the 2020 Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science, and the 2018 AMS Helmut Landsberg Award. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in meteorology from Florida State University. He has two TEDx talks on climate science and communication that collectively exceed two million views. He is routinely asked to brief the media, Congress, and the White House on weather–climate–science related topics. Dr. Shepherd has almost 100 peer-reviewed publications on various topics.