Breaking Climate – Climate as news

2026–2027 · Fondazione Cariplo · University of Milan + Climate Media Center Italia

Breaking Climate develops a journalism-oriented approach to climate communication in which climate change is treated not as a specialized environmental topic but as a factor increasingly shaping health, work, energy, food, mobility, tourism, industry, public policy and territorial change. The project selects and interprets current events through this lens, connecting individual news stories to the physical processes, socioeconomic mechanisms and policy choices that make them relevant to climate change. The aim is to bring climate information into ordinary news agendas rather than confining it to exceptional events or specialist coverage.

The approach requires a clear distinction between observed events, attribution, long-term trends and future projections. Scientific evidence is used to provide context without overstating what individual studies or episodes can demonstrate. Particular attention is given to impacts that are directly experienced by citizens and institutions, but also to adaptation and mitigation measures, economic consequences and conflicts among policy objectives. This produces a form of communication in which scientific sources and institutional reports complement journalism while remaining distinct from the news items themselves.