This guidebook is intended to provide a practical overview of climate envelope modeling for conservation professionals and natural resource managers. The material is intended for people with little background or experience in climate envelope modeling who want to better understand and interpret models developed by others and the results generated by such models, or want to do some modeling themselves. This is not an exhaustive review of climate envelope modeling, but rather a brief introduction to some key concepts in the discipline. Here we treat selected topics from a practical perspective, using minimal jargon to explain and illustrate some of the many issues that one has to be aware of when using climate envelope models. We have written the guidebook from the perspective of a natural resource manager attending a national conference, reading scientific articles or viewing webinars on climate change science related to species and habitat. The guidebook is structured as a series of questions that might result from hearing about work with climate envelope models at a conference, webinar, or in the primary literature. We begin with some general aspects of models and relevant background information. We then examine different components of the models, including species and climate data. We illustrate key concepts with examples from our own work developing climate envelope models for Florida’s threatened and endangered species, as well as work of others in the field of distribution modeling. It is our hope that this guidebook helps identify some of the key assumptions and uncertainties underlying climate envelope modeling while providing useful insights that will help users interpret the results of climate envelope models.