This database can help find news as well as scholarly sources on climate.  News and peer reviewed publications may help provide background for your assignment.

Articles from scholarly journals go through the peer review process.  An expert (or several experts) in a field writes the article and then a group of the authors' peers (usually anonymous) reviews the material to make sure that it is of sound science and scholarship and suitable for the publication and its target audience. The reviewers often suggest changes to the paper that are necessary before the work is published.

Scholarly articles often take a long time (6 months -2 years) to be published from the time they are submitted to the journal.

Why use scholarly articles? They are authoritative, and often focus on a very specific area of research. They can also lead you to other experts in the field through citation tracking and cited references.

Watch a ~4 minute review (with audio) demonstrating how to distinguish peer reviewed journals from other types of periodicals (Developed and made available by Vanderbilt University Library).