Climate Investigations Course: Data-Driven Climate Investigations

With so much climate data across many different countries and regions, it’s essential to know where to find the relevant information and how to dig deeper when you’re in the midst of a big climate project. This module will guide participants from hypothesis to story, including sections on finding and cleaning data, interrogating spreadsheets, and keeping on top of your evidence and the project as a whole, all using the latest tools and techniques. Participants will come away with the skills to start gathering, interviewing and presenting data for climate change reporting projects, as well as methodologies to manage data-driven research for impactful journalism.

The central aim of the module is for participants to work on live projects throughout the sessions and leave with their own data-driven story at an advanced stage of research.

This module is a stripped down version of our Data-Driven Investigations course, specifically tailored for climate change investigations. Participants will be expected to know their way around Excel/Google Sheets, and more specifically its PivotTable tool. If you are completely new to working with data then we strongly recommend that you attend our Finding Stories with Data course before attending this module.

There is an urgent need for greater public understanding of the looming climate crisis, and journalism has an integral role to play in this.

However, while environmental and climate reporting is crucial, there is an equally critical need for investigative journalism around these topics. While the public needs to know what is happening to our planet, they also need to understand why it is happening.

Why, despite decades of warnings and research into mitigation and solutions, is the situation worsening?

Where are promises and commitments being broken?

What is hindering the process of building new systems to avert the worst of the coming crisis?

And who, ultimately, is profiting from this situation?

This course will help you dig into the people, organisations, governments and companies that can provide you and your audience answers to these questions.

Technical Requirements

This course will need you to have the following software/apps/tools on your computer:

Zoom app
Camera and audio
MS Excel 2016 or newer (If do not have access to Excel, there is a free trial version available). We encourage the use of MS Excel (that is, the desktop “app”: the online version of Office 365 lacks some of the features you will need). If necessary, you can use Google Sheets, which has slightly different menus and instructions – these are documented in the online materials, but the trainer doesn’t always have the opportunity to demonstrate both systems in the session: he will certainly try, but you may find you need to do some extra work outside the session to catch up.

This course will be hosted on Zoom. To find out more about how we use Zoom, please check out our Zoom InfoSec page.

Course Structure

Exercises and additional resources will be provided to supplement the training between sessions.

Important

Our training is not recorded: if you miss a session, it is lost – you cannot watch a recording of it, nor will you be allowed to attend that session at a later date.

Ready to dive into Data-Driven Climate Investigations? Please see the booking form below.

Note that you can get a 20% discount on the total applicable fees by booking the full ‘Climate Investigations Course’ instead here which ‘Data-Driven Climate Investigations’ is a part of.

14 April 2025 – Planning and plotting your data investigation

10:00–11:30

In any data project, especially those involving complex, multi-faceted subjects such as climate change, it’s crucial to get the planning right from the very start. This first session looks at how to identify the leads that will point you in the right direction and explores the concept of the Story Memo - a structured action plan that will ensure your project starts out with clear objectives, maintains momentum and focus, and keeps your investigative hypothesis concise and continually refined.

15 April 2025 – Interviewing data

10:00–11:30

Once your project is clearly defined and you have a plan, it’s time to conduct your initial interviews. Data can be an incredibly fruitful interviewee, so long as you know how to ask it the right questions and quickly interpret the answers it provides. This session will demonstrate the primary functions and tools you need to ask questions of a dataset, before giving you a hands-on exercise with real climate-focused data to begin putting these methods into action. In groups, you’ll be asked to do some initial analysis of a dataset and identify some story angles to follow up on.

16 April 2025 – Sourcing/mapping the territory

10:00–11:30

In the next session, we bring the investigative hypothesis and data analysis together to map the territory of a project. This is a systematic method for identifying what you know to have happened, and extrapolating from that everything else that must have occurred. From this you can start to build a list of all the actors involved and identify which of those must hold relevant data and how you can go about finding and accessing it. The concepts will be worked through as a group on an example of a climate investigation. Participants will then apply this method to their own project ideas.

17 April 2025 – Bulletproofing and putting it all together

10:00–11:30

Climate is a contentious subject, and numbers and statistics can easily be misused whether intentionally or not. When conducting climate investigations, it’s essential to be transparent, honest and diligent, as any mistakes or lack of clarity can and will be picked apart, undermining your reporting and potentially leading to legal problems. The bulletproofing exercises look at how to keep your workings organised, ensure the data you are working with is clean and consistent, and identify common pitfalls and misuse of data-driven work, helping you to avoid these and produce accessible, relatable stories. This session will also look at enhancing the output of your data-driven investigation, and where to take your next steps, from merging datasets to coding and automation. The module ends with a chance to further refine individual project and story ideas and give and receive peer feedback on the results.

Trainer Biographies:

Leila Haddou

Leila Haddou is an investigative and data journalist. She has previously worked for BBC Panorama, The Times and Sunday Times, the FT and the Guardian. She has an avid interest in how technology can aid investigative reporting.

Jonathan Stoneman

Jonathan Stoneman is a freelance trainer specialising in data journalism. He has been working with data since 2010. Before that he worked at the BBC – as a reporter, producer, editor of output in Macedonian and Croatian, and finally as head of training at BBC World Service.

Booking Form

14 April 2025 10.00–11.30 BST (UK time)
15 April 2025 10.00–11.30 BST (UK time)
16 April 2025 10.00–11.30 BST (UK time)
17 April 2025 10.00–11.30 BST (UK time)

BST (UK time)

Location: Zoom meeting

Goldsmiths students (full time)*

sold out

£100

Students (full time)*

sold out

£119

Freelancers**

£199

Small Media/Education/NonProfit Organisations (<10 staff)

£330

Large Media/Education/NonProfit Organisations (10+ staff)

£489

Other Organisations

£915

One ticket per person.

In line with our non-profit mission, our pricing operates on a sliding scale, ensuring large organisations pay more to subsidise places for smaller newsrooms, freelancers and students.

*Students places for this course are capped, due to limited capacity. Anyone registering as a student will be asked for a photo/scan of their student ID ahead of the course.

**Employed individuals who cannot have their employers pay for the course are entitled to the freelancer rate. Note that we are a small charity and rely on your honesty so please do not register as a freelancer if your employer is reimbursing you for the course.

We have a strict policy of No Refund and No Transfer of bookings.

Fully booked:

27 March – 6 June 2025

Climate Investigations Course: All Modules

A comprehensive programme of training, providing all the expertise, skills and tools required to conduct thorough investigative research into the climate crisis. Book here for a 20% discount on all modules.

Upcoming:

27–28 March 2025

Climate Investigations Course: Climate Investigation Fundamentals

This introductory module provides participants with a holistic background about climate change as one of the major issues confronting the world. Participants will access specialist knowledge to better understand the context from a science, policy, and politics perspective.

Fully booked:

12–15 May 2025

Climate Investigations Course: Investigating Climate Finance

Billions are committed every year as part of the global reaction to the climate crisis. Whether invested in renewable energy, traded as carbon credits or assigned to mitigation or loss and damage funds, huge sums are involved.

Upcoming:

3–6 June 2025

Climate Investigations Course: ECOSINT

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