Attributions for extreme weather events: science and the people

Objective: To explore the effects of long-term climate trends and short-term weather fluctuations, evaluations of scientists and science, political predispositions, religious affiliation, the information environment, and demographic attributes on individuals’ views about whether global warming exists and, if so, whether it is a result of natural cycles or human activity. Methods: We use data from the 2009 Pew General Public Science Survey, along with data on long- and short-term patterns of temperature and precipitation in individuals’ home communities. Results: We find that long-term trends in summer temperatures influence perceptions of global warming. Individuals who reside in communities with long-term warming of summer temperatures that are coupled with long-term cooling of spring temperatures are significantly more likely to perceive that global warming exists and is due to human activity. We also find that Americans attitudes toward scientists and science, political dispositions, evangelical religious affiliation, education, and some demographic attributes all have discernible effects on their perceptions of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. Conclusion: Individuals’ attitudes toward global warming are influenced by long-term temperature trends in their home communities, as well as a variety of attitudinal and demographic attributes.

Social Science Quarterly, 2016

Objective. To explore the effects of long-term climate trends and short-term weather fluctuations, evaluations of scientists and science, political predispositions, religious affiliation, the information environment, and demographic attributes on individuals' views about whether global warming exists and, if so, whether it is a result of natural cycles or human activity. Methods. We use data from the 2009 Pew General Public Science Survey, along with data on long-and short-term patterns of temperature and precipitation in individuals' home communities. Results. We find that long-term trends in summer temperatures influence perceptions of global warming. Individuals who reside in communities with long-term warming of summer temperatures that are coupled with long-term cooling of spring temperatures are significantly more likely to perceive that global warming exists and is due to human activity. We also find that Americans' attitudes toward scientists and science, political dispositions, evangelical religious affiliation, education, and some demographic attributes all have discernible effects on their perceptions of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. Conclusion. Individuals' attitudes toward global warming are influenced by long-term temperature trends in their home communities, as well as a variety of attitudinal and demographic attributes.

In complex systems where humans and nature interact to produce joint outcomes, mitigation, adaptation, and resilience require that humans perceive feedback—signals of health and distress—from natural systems. In many instances, humans readily perceive feedback. In others, feedback is more difficult to perceive, so humans rely on experts, heuristics, biases, and/or identify confirming rationalities that may distort perceptions of feedback. This study explores human perception of feedback from natural systems by testing alternate conceptions about how individuals perceive climate anomalies, a form of feedback from the climate system. Results indicate that individuals generally perceive climate anomalies, especially when the anomalies are relatively extreme and persistent. Moreover, this finding is largely robust to political differences that generate predictable but small biases in feedback perception at extreme ends of the partisan spectrum. The subtlety of these biases bodes well for mitigation, adaptation, and resilience as human systems continue to interact with a changing climate system.

It has been argued that public doubts about climate change have been exacerbated by cold weather events seen as a form of disconfirming evidence for anticipated 'warming'. Although a link between perceptions of climate and weather is well-established, such assumptions have not been empirically tested. Here we show, using nationally representative data, that directly following a period of severe cold weather in the UK, three times as many people saw these events as pointing towards the reality of climate change, than as disconfirming it. This we argue was a consequence of these cold winters being incorporated into a conceptualisation of extreme or 'unnatural' weather resulting from climate change. We also show that the way in which people interpret cold weather is associated with levels of pre-existing scepticism about climate change, which is in turn related to more general worldviews. Drawing attention to 'extreme' weather as a consequence of climate change can be a useful communication device, however this is problematic in the case of seasonal cold.

I use one nationally representative sample from CBS News/New York Times Poll on Environment (2007), supplemented with monthly temperature and precipitation data from the United States Historical Climatology Network and extreme weather events data from National Climatic Data Center, to examine how different weather measures and individuals’ socio-demographic background, political predisposition, and beliefs about global warming affect the perception of local weather. Beliefs about global warming are found to play a dominant role in determining the perception of local weather. Specifically, people who view that global warming is causing an immediate impact, is serious, and needs to be a priority are much more likely to perceive a strange pattern of weather in the recent past. This finding conforms to motivated reasoning which refers to the tendency to interpret evidence to confirm the pre-existing beliefs and predisposition. Among all the weather measures, the total number of extreme weather events in the past three years appears to be the only significant indicator of perceived weather. Specifically, individuals who have experienced more extreme weather events in their home counties are more likely than those elsewhere to perceive the weather is stranger than usual. I further examine how actual weather and perceived weather together affect perceptions of global warming. The results illustrate that the perception of local weather has stronger explanatory power than actual weather. People who perceive the strange weather patterns are much more likely than others to see the immediate impacts and priority of global warming. Future studies are needed to investigate the dynamic relationship between perceptions of global warming and perceptions of weather and climate. In addition, more studies are needed to further examine how the public forms their opinions toward various specific types of the local weather and climate.

WIREs Climate Change, 2021

Climate change certainly shapes weather events. However, describing climate and weather as the cause of disasters can be misleading, since disasters are caused by pre-existing fragilities and inequalities on the ground. Analytic frames that attribute disaster to climate can divert attention from these place

Global Environmental Change, 2020

Scientists can now connect extreme weather events with climate change using a methodology known as “extreme event attribution”, or EEA. The idea of connecting climate change and extreme weather has long been heralded as a panacea for communications, connecting the dangers of climate change to real-world, on-the-ground events. However, event attribution remains a nascent science, and attribution studies of the same event can sometimes produce divergent answers due to precise methodology used, variables examined, and the timescale selected for the event. The 2011–2017 California drought was assessed by 11 EEA studies which came to varying conclusions on its connection to climate change. This article uses the case study of the drought and a multi-methods approach to examine perceptions of EEA among key stakeholders and citizens. Twenty-five key informant interviews were conducted with different stakeholders: scientists performing EEA research, journalists, local and state-level policymakers, and non-governmental organization representatives. In addition, two focus groups with 20 California citizens were convened: one with environmentalists and another with agriculturalists. While climate change was viewed by many as a mild contributing factor to the California drought, many stakeholders had not heard of EEA or doubted that scientists could conclusively link the drought to anthropogenic climate change; those that were familiar with EEA felt that the science was generally uncertain. In the focus groups, presentation of divergent EEA results led participants to revert to pre-existing ideas about the drought-climate connection, or to question whether science had sufficiently advanced to analyze the event properly. These results indicate that while EEA continues to provoke interest and research in the scientific community, it is not currently utilized by many stakeholders, and may entrench the public in pre-existing views.

2014

Climate laypersons are in a difficult epistemic position regarding what they have good reasons to believe about climate change: this is due to the manufacture of the ambiguous meaning of the term climate change in the popular press. In this article I argue that the layperson has an epistemic duty to formulate good enough views about the meaning of the term 'climate change' in consideration of the term's meaning ambiguity, in accordance with the facts of climate consensus, and considering the layperson's own epistemic dependence.

Social Science Quarterly, 2010

Objectives. In this article we examine the causes of both belief and disbelief in global warming among adult Americans. Methods. We use national-and statelevel telephone surveys to collect data on individual-level beliefs regarding climate change and employ ordered logistical regression to measures the relative effect of various factors on those beliefs. Results. The study finds that U.S. views on climate change are being shaped by a combination of personal observations, meteorological events, and physical changes on the planet. The impact of various factors on one's belief in global warming are significantly determined by partisan affiliation, with Democrats and Republicans responding differently to assorted types of evidence. Conclusion. Beliefs regarding global warming are being shaped by individual experiences and weather phenomenon and the processing of such factors is substantially influenced by a person's partisan leanings.

Public Understanding of Science, 2006