AbstractRecent years have seen another peak in global media attention to climate change. Drivenby increasingly dire news about extreme weather, growing demands of systemic adaptionand a new wave political activism, the current situation has increasingly been framed as aclimate crisis. This introductory essay maps these recent developments and elaborates theconceptual potentials and limitations of the “crisis” frame. It also briefly reviews the stateof the art of media research and situates the contributions of the issue into this landscape.