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🌎 beyond the headlines with CNN's climate team  

"It’s hard to imagine a moment when covering the climate crisis was more important than it is right now." That's what Angela Fritz, CNN's senior climate editor, said when Inside CNN asked her about the climate team's reporting mission.

The planet is warming faster than previously thought, a recent report found — and, in a few days, world leaders will congregate in Glasgow, Scotland, to decide what to do about it. (Learn more about that UN climate conference here.)

Earlier this year, CNN announced it was "formalizing and expanding" its climate coverage. As the newly formed team prepares to cover the upcoming UN climate talks, we asked the journalists to share what has surprised them the most in their reporting on the subject. Here's what they told us:

There are dozens of small but noticeable ways climate change is altering my home state of New Hampshire. 
 
Our winters can still be frigid, but the annual snow cover has become far less predictable, making each year uncertain for the local ski industry.

The Wildcat Mountain ski area in Gorham, New Hampshire (Photo: NH Dept. of Tourism)

Spring now comes earlier than when I was a kid. Back then, we used to see one or two wood ticks with the season's arrival. Now my parents pull dozens of these bloodsucking insects off themselves and their dog every year. And as fall lingers, tens of thousands of winter ticks, which thrive in the extended warmer weather, glom onto moose each year, draining their blood and sometimes killing them — especially calves. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have called this an "alarming" increase.  

The warming temperatures also mean my parents can now easily grow a massive grapevine in what used to be a cold Northern climate. Their grapevine recently produced two bushels of fruit.
 
Much of the focus on climate change has been on areas wracked by fires, drought and hurricanes, but northern New England is also not immune to the impacts.  

Many meteorologists were skeptical in the early 2000s, mostly because we were used to dealing with different types of data, uncertainties and forecasts that shaped our understanding of the Earth’s weather and climate.

But after leading the CNN World Weather department through one unprecedented extreme weather disaster after another — such as the Russia heat wave in 2010, Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 and countless others — the realities of climate change made themselves overwhelmingly apparent.

Super Typhoon Haiyan killed more than 6,000 people in the southern Philippines in 2013. (Photo: Getty Images)

Today, it's painfully obvious that weather and climate can no longer be separated, and you cannot cover the former without also focusing on the latter.

When I was living in Jakarta, a friend told me a good way to remember the word for peatland in the Indonesian language, “gambut”: It sounds just like gum boot (or rubber boots, which you definitely want two of when you’re walking through peat).
 
Indonesian peatlands are muddy, muggy and full of mosquitoes, but I spent a lot of time in these tropical forests to report on illegal logging in the country.

Part of a peatland forest is cleared on Indonesia's Sumatra Island (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

I became totally fascinated by their role as natural carbon sinks, which have the ability to soak up and store huge amounts of carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis — cleaning and cooling the air we breathe.
 
I’m originally from Australia, and despite my country’s stunning natural beauty, the government’s climate record is shameful. The vulnerable Indonesian forests may have reeled me into the world of climate journalism, but it’s my drive for more climate action in Australia that motivates me most.

I grew up knowing I wanted to be a meteorologist, but what I didn’t know when I was a child was how the weather would change in my lifetime. By the time I finished college, it was clear the climate crisis was already changing our world, and I wanted to know more. My time in grad school was spent learning how this crisis touches every part of the Earth system — oceans, land and atmosphere.

For a scientist, it’s been fascinating to watch the media evolve on the climate crisis. Its portrayal has gone from a hypothesis with “two sides” to a source of incredible political tension to the acknowledgment that it’s happening, humans are to blame and something must be done about it.

Alongside the media transformation, we’ve seen public perception shift, too, in large part because people are experiencing the impacts themselves.

I’m surprised that we can now say this storm or this heat wave or this drought is worse because humans burn things for energy.

For so long, we talked only about generalized climate change trends, and I am awed by science that can pinpoint this attribution.

Covering the climate crisis has made me realize the disturbing inequality in global climate research. Growing up in the Pacific Islands, I saw how extreme weather events have worsened over the years, impacting the economy and people’s lives.

As wealthier countries continue to pump planet-heating emissions into the atmosphere, low-income and small developing nations are fronting the costs, pushing many to migrate from their homes.
 
Yet climate change studies are twice as likely to focus on wealthier countries in Europe and North America than low-income countries like those in Africa and the Pacific Islands, which has the effect of masking the scope of the crisis.

It’s a blind spot that needs more attention.

🔎 3 essential reads: A closer look at climate

🗓️  mark your calendars

🎧 Listen: Did you know that only 1 in 7 people around the world live in a full democracy? CNN's Clarissa Ward travels to some of the most volatile corners of the globe to talk to the men and women who are challenging those in power in her new podcast, "Tug of War." 

💻 Watch: Real estate mogul and "Shark Tank" star Barbara Corcoran joins CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans tomorrow at noon ET to discuss the booming housing market, followed by a panel chat with other experts. Sign up here.

🔎 Explore: Confused by crypto? You’re not alone. Check out this immersive Q&A with 15 experts in the industry to get answers on everything from what cryptocurrency is to how it's impacting the environment.

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- Written and edited by Beryl Adcock, Tricia Escobedo, Melissa Mahtani and Jessica Sooknanan