United Nations Environment Programme [2]

UNEP is the administrative umbrella for most major UN environmental efforts, including those on climate change. Their site is a good place to look for current and upcoming events, reports, and documents.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [7]

The UNFCCC is a treaty that was negotiated at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, was ratified by some 189 countries, and went into effect in March 1994. It initially had no mandatory controls or deadlines. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which did set mandatory limits, was an add-on to the UNFCCC.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [9]

The IPCC is the umbrella organization that articulates not only the consensus among climate scientists, but also the breadth of opinion among them. It assembles and synthesizes the work of some 2,000 scientists in scores of disciplines from about 150 countries. Wikipedia. [10] Press Contact. [11]

Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Penn State University [13]

Penn State's EESI includes the Center for Penn State Ice and Climate Research [14], the National Institute for Climatic Change Research [15], and several other centers relevant to climate change.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT has several entities involved in climate research. The Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change [18] is a cross-cutting program that melds work from MIT's Center for Global Change Science [19] and the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research [20].

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Earth Institute at Columbia University [23]

A major research institute with over 200 scientists focusing on all earth sciences, especially strong on climate-related topics.

Hadley Centre for Climate Change [25]

The Hadley Centre is part of the British government's meteorological agency (known as the Met Office), which, although owned by the Ministry of Defence, was put on a commercial footing in 1996. Wikipedia. [26] Press Contact. [27]

Scripps Institution of Oceanography [29]

Scripps' reputation for oceanography research is unrivaled. But few people realize how important a role the oceans play in climate. Located at the University of California at San Diego, Scripps does extensive research on climate. Wikipedia. [30] Press Contact. [31]

National Center for Atmospheric Research [34]

NCAR is perhaps the greatest U.S. climate research institution. It draws not merely post-docs, but prominent researchers from around the U.S. and around the globe. It is federally funded via the National Science Foundation and administered by a consortium of universities (UCAR).

Journalists might want to remember that there are many major scientific research institutions studying climate change across the many disciplines needed to describe and understand it. Many of these are attached to universities -- but others are consortiums of labs or partnerships between federal and private entities. There are too many to list, but below you will find some of the weightiest. Whenever possible, we have listed contact info for the director and a link to the faculty directory, so you can go straight to the source.