Human-induced climate change intensifies extreme weather events due to its profound impact on the Earth's atmospheric balance. Despite its global relevance, research on climate education predominantly focuses on K-12 levels or college science majors, leaving a significant gap in understanding how non-science majors engage with this critical issue. Addressing this gap, this study examines the impact of a scaffolding activity, the Extreme Weather Model-Evidence Link (EW-MEL) diagram activity, on non-science major college students’ perceptions of global climate change and its connection to extreme weather events. The research was conducted with 62 college students from a research university in the United States. The study employed a pre-post quasi-experimental design to examine whether students’ plausibility perceptions about climate change alter after participating in the EW-MEL activity. The findings indicated a statistically significant change in students’ plausibility perceptions after the MEL activity. Moreover, in the EW MEL activity, while more students found the scientific explanation plausible, many also found the alternative explanation plausible. This indicates that despite students’ acknowledgement of the human impact on global climate change, misunderstandings may still exist. The study highlights the need for explicitly teaching critical evaluation in higher education to enhance students’ understanding of evidence-based decision making.

由于人类引起的气候变化对地球大气平衡产生深远影响，因此加剧了极端天气事件。尽管气候教育具有全球相关性，但气候教育的研究主要集中在 K-12 水平或大学科学专业，在理解非科学专业如何参与这一关键问题方面存在巨大差距。为了解决这一差距，本研究考察了脚手架活动，即极端天气模型-证据链接 （EW-MEL） 图活动对非理科专业大学生对全球气候变化及其与极端天气事件的联系的看法的影响。该研究是对来自美国一所研究型大学的 62 名大学生进行的。该研究采用了前后准实验设计来检查学生在参加 EW-MEL 活动后对气候变化的合理性看法是否发生了变化。研究结果表明，在 MEL 活动后，学生的合理性感知发生了统计学上的显着变化。此外，在 EW MEL 活动中，虽然更多的学生认为科学解释合理，但许多人也认为替代解释合理。这表明，尽管学生们承认人类对全球气候变化的影响，但误解仍然存在。该研究强调了在高等教育中明确教授批判性评估的必要性，以增强学生对循证决策的理解。