Background research can help you get the lay of the land, figure out what trends you want to focus on, and learn the vocabulary that is used to describe your topic. You don't have to use library resources for your background research but if you want to, check out some of these:
Annual Reviews is a collection of more than 50 annual review journals covering many science and social science disciplines. Each journal exclusively publish review articles which synthesize and summarize research within a field or discipline. This database includes full-text access to every historical article and issue within the collection as well as the most recent articles published.
If you don't have a background in science, researching the climate impacts of something can be difficult. Sure, you know that that a warming earth leads to increasingly severe weather but why? Or maybe you know that plastics won't biodegrade but how exactly does that affect the climate? To gain an overview of climate change, take a look Gale in Context: Environmental Science.
Gale In Context: Environmental Studies provides news, overview information, case studies, video, unique commentaries, primary source documents, and statistics. Search by keyword or browse by topic to gather a wide variety of sources related to environmental topics - excellent for non-science majors researching environmental topics.