The Climate Change Research program has developed four climate change training courses through the Climate Resilience Knowledge to Action project. These courses are free, online, self-guided, interactive courses which take anywhere from 2-5 hours each to complete. Each course is available to participants for up to 90 days at a time, however participants may re-enroll as needed after that timeframe.
Introduction to Global Society and Climate Change is a primer course for future climate change training. It explains key terminology, reviews climate change science, and describes different responses to climate change including adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Climate Change and the Yukon focuses on climate change impacts, risks, and responses specific to the Yukon. It also highlights organizations, groups, and policies that are relevant to climate change in the Yukon.
Understanding, using, and communicating climate data provides an overview on types of data used in climate change science as well as how to access, interpret, and communicate climate data.
Climate Change Risk Management: Assessments & Resilience allows students to familiarize themselves with the structure, types, and uses of climate change risk assessments by reviewing guidelines, examples, and key resources.
This course is designed to act as a primer for further climate change education and training: it defines key terms used in climate change conversation, describes key elements of the scientific understanding of causes and impacts of climate change at a global and national scale, and summarizes the dominant responses that society is pursuing to overcome the challenges posed by climate change. This course is intended to bring people with varying backgrounds and climate change knowledge to a place of mutual understanding with regards to important language, knowledge, and tools regarding climate change.
Audience: This course is for people who do not have a background in climate change science but who wish to acquire the language and knowledge required to understand, discuss, and take action on climate change.
The objectives of the courses include summarizing climate change impacts specific to Yukon, describe how Western and Indigenous systems are informing our understanding of climate risk, introduce strategies that various Yukon organizations are employing to address climate risk and implement adaptation and mitigation measures, and inspire action by sharing youth voices on climate change. As climate change impacts and responses shift and progress, the contents of this course will require updating.
Audience: Participants already have a basic understanding of climate change, including understanding the global drivers of climate change, responses including mitigation and adaptation, and the roles of various international organizations in responding (they are highly encouraged to have taken Introduction to Climate Change and Global Society). Participants seek more detailed information on climate change in the Yukon including local impacts, risks, responses as well as key resources, policies, and organizations.
This course reviews types of data used in climate change science, what climate data are used for, how to interpret different data, how to effectively communicate key messages related to climate change data, and useful tools and resources for people who use climate change data but aren’t necessarily involved in data production and analysis.
Audience: People who are using climate change data for planning, decision-making, education, or otherwise, but may not be conducting data analysis themselves and have not had formal training in climate change data analysis and interpretation.
The content of this course builds upon the two existing courses "Introduction to Climate Change and Our Global Society" and "Climate Change and the Yukon". While these two introductory courses introduce the concepts of climate risks, impacts, assessments, and resilience, this course provides an in-depth exploration of climate change risk management processes. In this course we review the structure, components, contents, purposes and uses of climate risk assessments, as well as provide tools and resources for conducting and communicating assessments. The goal of this course is to provide professionals with the tools, knowledge, and skills to integrate risk management and resilience strategies into the workplace within the context of climate policy.
Audience: Professionals who design programs, make infrastructure decisions, and work on longer-term projects which may be impacted directly or indirectly by climate change. This could include planners, engineers, policy analysts, decision-makers, etc.