Climate change may no longer dominate the nation’s political conversation, but experts say its effects are becoming increasingly personal for many families—from dangerous heat and wildfire smoke to changing conditions that affect how people live, work and spend time outdoors.

During American Community Media’s national briefing, “Climate Change: The Issue That Dropped Off the Political Radar,” scientists and community leaders discussed why public conversation around climate has faded even as many communities continue experiencing more frequent extreme weather. The panelists agreed that people are often more likely to understand climate change through lived experiences than scientific terminology alone.

Karen McKinnon, a professor of statistics and the environment at UCLA, said advances in climate science have made it easier to connect many extreme weather events to a changing climate than was possible decades ago. The challenge, she said, is communicating those findings in ways that resonate with people’s daily lives.

“I don’t think that the average person, if you say the world is going to warm by two degrees Celsius, that doesn’t resonate with people,” McKinnon said. “But as we all unfortunately experience these impacts and can also talk about how these impacts are linked to climate change, I think that has the potential to change the narrative.”

To illustrate her point, McKinnon shared a recent experience while visiting family in Colorado.

Wildfire smoke drifting in from Colorado and Utah forced her to tell her daughter that camping outside was no longer safe.

“No, it’s not safe. You can’t camp out in the backyard,” McKinnon said. “When it gets to extreme heat, you have to say, ‘No, it’s not safe. You can’t actually be outside in these conditions.'”

She said those moments often leave a stronger impression than scientific measurements alone.

“What we want back is a case where we’re not having smoke ruining our summers,” she said. “We’re not having the extreme heat ruining our summers. We’re really able to get back to a somewhat cooler and more stable climate state than we are right now.”

McKinnon also encouraged people to recognize how much weather patterns have changed within a generation.

“A lot of the things we’re seeing right now are unusual. They did not happen in the past,” she said. “In terms of the extreme heat and in terms of the wildfires, this is not normal in terms of what we would have seen 10, 20 or 30 years ago.”

Shina Robinson, resilience projects director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, said conversations about climate become more meaningful when they focus on issues people experience every day rather than technical policy language.

Using California’s Equitable Decarbonization Program as an example, Robinson said phrases like “healthy and habitable homes” resonate more with residents because they reflect concerns that families immediately understand.

“We’re talking about health. We’re talking about cleaner air in homes. We’re talking about lower asthma rates. We’re talking about safety for people’s kids,” Robinson said.

Mark Valentine, founder of ReFrame It Consulting and senior advisor to the Omega Resilience Awards, said climate change has not disappeared from public life. Instead, he believes people often see individual weather events reported without understanding how they fit into a broader conversation.

“There’s certainly a disappearing coverage of the phenomenon of climate change, but there’s an abundance of coverage about wildfire and heat and drought,” Valentine said. “I think what’s missing is connecting those dots together for people.”

Throughout the briefing, speakers encouraged journalists and community leaders to connect climate science to people’s lived experiences rather than abstract concepts or technical terminology. They argued that conversations about climate become more meaningful when they reflect the moments families already recognize—from extreme heat and wildfire smoke to concerns about children’s health and time spent outdoors.