The issue of uncertainty about climate change as transparently communicated by scientists is integral to climate research. Both concepts - the complexity and the uncertainty of projection data - make climate research an exciting field and confront the population with major challenges. The scientific consensus of anthropogenic climate change is described, but there are also uncertainties, which for example, result from incomplete knowledge, creating tension in the field of climate research. This study provides an empirical contribution to climate change education, which is a central topic in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and shows how uncertainties are perceived from the students’ perspective. Guided interviews were conducted with high school students using Mayring’s approach of deductive category formation. We found interesting results among students in the area of uncertainties in climate modeling. Uncertainties due to limited knowledge about climate change and anthropogenic factors were less mentioned by the students, but they appeared to have much knowledge about the limits of climate modeling.

Anchored in the thirteenth of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), climate change is one of the key content areas in education for sustainable development. This evaluation study describes a school project that introduces students to scientific work and, more specifically, to scientific research methods in climate research. Using a pre-post design, the evaluation uses a scale measuring epistemological beliefs, as well as two other scales addressing the relevance of climate change in society and career prospects in the field of climate research. The quantitative questionnaire data indicate an increase in future career aspirations in the field of climate research. The qualitative interview data reveal positive changes in the understanding of science and show that an understanding of the nature of science can be promoted.

Werden gesicherte Erkenntnisse sowie Unsicherheiten zum Thema Klimawandel in Schulbüchern adäquat kommuniziert und bilden sie den aktuellen Diskurs ab? Im Rahmen der Studie werden Klimawandelkapitel in Schulbüchern analysiert und Vorschläge zu Gestaltung und Struktur von Schulbüchern entwickelt. Uncertainties are transparently presented and communicated in the Assessment Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This study examines the extent to which textbooks reflect this discourse, in the sense of the Nature of Science. The aim is to identify the representation of both virtually certain findings and uncertainties on the topic of climate change in textbooks. For this purpose, climate change chapters in lower and upper secondary school geography textbooks were analyzed, using qualitative content analysis with deductive-inductive category formation according to Philipp Mayring. It was discovered that uncertainties are represented predominantly by linguistic means (e. g., subjunctive), while technical terminology (such as that of the IPCC) is hardly used. Similar results can be seen for virtually certain findings.