Why communicating scientific uncertainty matters

"Partly cloudy with a 40% chance of showers."

Admit it.

Your local meteorologist is probably the most frequently used scientist in your life.

For decades we're the ones blathering on about rainfall chances for your wedding day or your kids baseball game. We sometimes throw around fancy sounding meteorological terms like microburst and storm surge as if we're talking to a room full of fellow weather geeks.

The truth is, advances in weather forecasting have been a major success story over the past 40 years. Today's 5-day forecast is now as accurate as the 3.5-day forecast was 30 years ago. Advances in supercomputer capability have had a lot to do with improved forecast success.

Hurricane track forecasts have improved dramatically in the past 30 years.  In the 1980s, the average hurricane landfall error three days out was about 350 miles. Today it's closer to 150 miles three days in advance of landfall. If you're a major coastal city manager in places like Miami or New Orleans, a 150 mile landfall cone is much more "actionable" than a 350 mile wedge.

We're doing a better job of picking out the signal from the weather data noise.

But even with significant advances in physical sciences like weather forecasting and climate science, social science tells us how we communicate the inherent uncertainty in science is critical. Effective communication determines how you, the end user, perceive the credibility of the information we present. In other words; effectively differentiating between what we know to be highly certain and what we are less certain about matters.

And it matters a lot.

A lawyer, a scientist and a journalist walk into a bar...

I had the honored to spend a few days last week in Washington D.C. at a workshop on communicating uncertainty in science sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental law Institute. A group of about 50 prominent climate and other scientists, lawyers and journalists attended the event.

I know. What kind of geek would get invited to a conference like that?

But as you recover from your outburst of laughter, think about how you perceive science and uncertainty in your life.

The science of meteorology is producing better weather forecast data. Climate science continues to make new discoveries that inform us about current and future effects. As these sciences advance and evolve, it's also critical that we communicate what we know...and what we don't yet know, effectively.

One of my takeaways from the workshop is that when we know something with a high enough degree of certainty to be actionable we need to communicate that clearly. The high degree of certainty on the broad brush strokes of climate science is a great example. We know with virtually complete certainty we are changing the chemistry of our atmosphere and warming our planet. There is more than enough certainty about climate change to justify action at many levels in our personal life, and on wider business, industrial and governmental scales.

There also continues to be a higher degree of uncertainty on the finer details of climate science. How quickly will the planet warm? What specific regional differences will manifest? As I wrote this morning, there is still a lot of science to be done on just how quickly sea levels will rise as ice sheets react to a warmer climate system. There is also a good deal of healthy scientific debate on how fast sea levels will rise on our coastlines. That evolving subset of climate science is critical at many levels. City and state managers need to know what to plan for as they redesign and rebuild urban and coastal infrastructural for the next 150 years.

Our economic climate reality going forward is we all live in a mutual risk pool of taxes and insurance costs that we ultimately pay for as climate shifts and extreme weather-driven catastrophic losses mount.  Looking at the tea leaves, it is increasingly clear to me that the effects of climate change are increasingly likely be the top news story of the next 10 to 50 years as climate shifts and extreme weather events continue to accelerate.

As both a weather scientist and climate journalist, it's increasingly important I sharpen my communication skills to accurately communicate the intricacies of weather and climate. As a profession we need to remember our audience has a growing need for clear and actionable science communication.