CfP: EJPS Topical Collection: "Understanding Climate Change: A Multifaceted Inquiry"
Guest editors: Gabriel Târziu (LMU Munich) and Borut Trpin (LMU Munich, University of Maribor and University of Ljubljana)
Submission Deadline: 1 December 2025
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Addressing it requires an unprecedented level of collaboration and engagement between scientists, the public, and policy-makers. A central but underexplored theme in this context is the role of understanding. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2023) emphasizes that proper responses to climate change are facilitated when key actors share a basic understanding of its causes and consequences. But what kind of understanding is needed, and by whom?
This topical collection seeks to examine the multifaceted role of understanding in successfully addressing climate change, focusing on scientific understanding, public understanding, and the epistemic needs of policymakers. We invite contributions that engage with any of these three focal areas. Below, we outline some of the questions that contributions might address; however, submissions exploring other related issues concerning understanding and climate change are equally welcome.
1. Understanding in Climate Science
· What is the epistemic value of understanding in climate science, as distinct from knowledge?
· How does understanding contribute to model construction, error detection, and assessment of model adequacy?
· How do approaches such as model hierarchies and the storyline framework contribute to scientific understanding of the climate system? In what ways do they complement or compete with one another in terms of the kinds of understanding they provide?
· Are there alternative, perhaps underexplored, methods for enhancing scientific understanding of the climate system?
2. Understanding in Climate Policy
· What epistemic strategies or cognitive tools can guide effective climate-related policymaking under conditions of deep uncertainty?
· How does counterfactual reasoning and its use in approaches like the storyline framework shape the production and application of “usable” climate science?
· What role should understanding play in shaping mitigation and adaptation strategies?
· In what ways does the framing of uncertainty influence the authority, relevance, and uptake of climate science in policy contexts?
3. Understanding in the Public Sphere
· What epistemic needs does the public have in order to form sound opinions about climate change and participate productively in democratic decision-making on topics pertaining to this issue?
· Is trust in science sufficient for democratic participation on climate issues, or must the public also possess some degree of understanding of climate change?
· What exactly is the public understanding of science supposed to involve in the context of climate change, and what is its object? Does the public need to understand, for instance, the phenomenon of climate change itself, the scientific content, the processes of science, the nature of science, or science as a social enterprise?
· What challenges arise in fostering public understanding in socially diverse and politically polarized contexts?
Submission Information
Deadline for submissions: December 1, 2025.
Submission portal: https://www.
Please select the topical collection "Understanding Climate Change: A Multifaceted Inquiry" when submitting.
All papers will be peer-reviewed according to the standards of EJPS.