With the Paris Agreement, countries have pledged to promote strategies and policies to substantially reduce their carbon emissions. To align public sentiment with potentially expensive climate mitigation policy, climate change education is considered an essential tool in tackling climate change, particularly for the young generation. However, a general lack of engagement is driven by the perception that climate change is irrelevant at local and individual scales. Based on a modified version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we implemented a new climate change educational programme, in 12 rural areas of China, where adolescents communicated with local seniors (aged ≥ 60 years) in focus groups to discuss local climate over the past decades. Seniors’ memories of extreme climatic events generally were in concordance with meteorological data. The adolescents’ uncertainty about climate change exhibited significant change after the programme, followed by concern, risk perception, and perceived behavioural control. Based on mediation analysis, the shift in adolescent concern and perceived behavioural control translated into greater willingness to support climate change mitigation. Thus, we suggest that climate change education should emphasize place-based strategies that highlight the relevance of global climate change through local impacts and individual experiences vis-a-vis inter-generational communication to promote greater engagement with climate change.