Some observations:

• The quantity of climate change coverage decreased. Maxwell T. Boykoff, who tracks media coverage of the environment at the University of Colorado, said that from April to September of last year, The Times’s print edition published 362 articles in which climate change featured prominently. In the same six months this year, that number dropped significantly — by about a third — to 242 articles. However, he warned: “It’s complicated. We can be lulled into thinking that more coverage is better; that’s not always true.” And the amount of news coverage, of course, often corresponds to particular events or controversies. (Overall U.S. news coverage of climate change has plummeted, he said, after peaks in 2007 and 2009.)

• Beyond quantity, the amount of deep, enterprising coverage of climate change in The Times appears to have dropped, too. In that six-month period this year, there were only three front-page stories in which climate change was the main focus, compared with nine the year before. All three were written by the excellent science reporter Justin Gillis, and two of three were pegged to a specific global warming milestone (the other had to do with President Obama’s policy on the environment). With fewer reporters and no coordinating editor, what was missing was the number and variety of fresh angles from the previous year — such as a September article on what is being revealed beneath that Arctic ice melting at a record pace.

• The Times, which has published many groundbreaking series on the environment, has not had such a series since Mr. Gillis’s “Temperature Rising” ended in January. Such series not only provide especially deep reporting, but their presence also shows the subject is a high priority. “The Times is the thought leader and the agenda-setter, both globally and in the United States,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s Project on Climate Change Communication. “What it does matters tremendously, especially on this topic whose impact is invisible.”

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• The Green blog, which Dr. Leiserowitz called “an invaluable and trusted place,” has not been replaced, nor has the approximately $40,000-a-year worth of freelance reporting for the blog that extended the sweep and scope of environmental coverage.