Posted on 6 June 2018 by BaerbelW

After recently publishing an article about Climate Science websites around the world, some suggestions came in via comments or emails to add more sites to the post. But, these were mostly for blogs instead of full-fledged websites so they didn't quite fit the focus of that earlier post. So, here is the companion article introducing non-English blogs focused on climate science around the world.

Dutch - The Netherlands

Klimaatverandering

The Dutch blog "Klimaatverandering" (climate change) was started in 2008 by Bart Verheggen as the Dutch counterpart to his English blog “Our Changing Climate”. When confronted with certain myths he started to search the web for information, only to find that misinformation was often crowding out scientifically credible voices. This, combined with the large gap between public and scientific understanding of the issue, led him to start his own blog. His aim is to inject a scientifically grounded voice to the public debate about climate change.

Since 2012 Jos Hagelaars, Hans Custers en Bob Brand have joined his Dutch blog. Together they try to maintain a high quality blog by critiquing each other’s writings before publication, as an internal review procedure as it were (similar to what’s done at SkS). Some of their pieces have been featured at SkS as well, including e.g. the graph that Jos Hagelaars made about global average temperatures from the Last Glacial Maximum all the way to the projections for 2100. This figure has made its way to many different publications, sometimes in a slightly adapted form.

Bart Verheggen's student Max von Geuns recently published the aptly named article "Blogging as an Allergic Reaction to Climate Bullshit" in which Bart's motivation to blog gets explained in more detail.

Finland - Finnish

Ilmastotiedo

Ilmastotieto is a Finnish climate blog that started in 2010 when several individual bloggers decided to start a group blog. Subject areas covered are practically anything relating to climate and climate change. Among published articles are climate news pieces, feature articles on wide range of topics (basic climate science, climate change impacts, mitigation, etc.), and myth debunking. Ilmastotieto is closely tied to Skeptical Science, as the blog authors are the ones that have done the Finnish translations of some Skeptical Science articles. The Finnish translations, by the way, were the first published translations on Skeptical Science as announced in this blog post.

German - Germany

Klimalounge

Stefan Rahmstorf started his German-language blog Klimalounge (originally together with two colleagues) in 2008, because he sees it as part of his duty as a climate scientist to engage with the public about this important topic. His own research focus is on changes in the climate system both modern and in Earth's history. He has worked e.g. on the role of the oceans in climate change (including sea level rise and the Atlantic ocean circulation), on weather extremes and on changes in atmospheric dynamics including the jet stream. Some of his blog posts he publishes both in German at Klimalounge and in English on RealClimate, a blog he co-founded with other climate scientists in 2004. But many posts at KlimaLounge are focused on climate change in Germany and/or the public and policy debates in Germany - which was a key motivation for starting a German blog alongside Realclimate. In 2017 Rahmstorf was awarded the Climate Communication Prize of the American Geophysical Union, as the first scientist working outside the US. He also won the German Umweltmedienpreis.

Italian - Italy

Here is what Riccardo Reitano let us know about Climalteranti:

The blog Climalteranti.it was founded in 2008 by a group of scientists belonging to different fields (climatology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, engineering, communication, ...). Each article goes through a review from the scientific committee before publication to guarantee the quality of what is published.

We focus mainly on debunking climate misinformation in Italy and elsewhere and on updates on climate science. We also follow the meetings and outcomes of the IPCC and the various COP and occasionally translate posts from RealClimate. Each year we grants a "prize" for the most egregious misinformation spread by a italian individual or organization."

Antonello Pasini sent us this description of his blog:

The Italian blog Il Kyoto fisso was started in 2007 by Antonello Pasini, climate scientist at Italian National Research Council in Rome. It was published till 2012 in Il Sole 24 ore, the most important Italian economic newspaper. Since 2012 Il Kyoto fisso has been published in Le Scienze, which is the Italian edition of Scientific American.

Antonello Pasini began this enterprise to combat misinformation and introduce the reader to methods and results of the science of climate change. This is very important because people generally do not know scientific studies on complex systems such as climate. In particular, a culture of modelling is quite completely lacking, while this method represents the real scientific revolution in the research about complex systems, and climate in particular.

In 2016, Il Kyoto fisso was named the Italian scientific blog of the year which is a national prize of scientific popularization.

If you know of any other similar non-English blogs focused on climate change, please let us know either in the comments or via the contact form. We'll add them to the post once we've verified that the content is science-based.