YOU notice the weather every day. You don't see climate change happening every day. That is also one of the prime reasons why people don't buy into the concept in many parts of the world," says Somdatta Karak. The former educator, who looks after science communication and public outreach at Hyderabad's CSIR - Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), a premier research institute for modern biology, has been making short comics with artist Argha Manna, on climate change as part of the institute's Climate Change Challenge (CCC) this year.

The challenge was launched last year as a means to get high school students to identify the impact of climate change in their localities and find ways to mitigate them. But most of the entries received last year talked of pollution, not climate crises. "People associate darkness with CO2 pollution, but how CO2 is going to have a much longer-lasting impact by changing the climate is not discussed that widely," Karak shares.