Science, Technology and Society Priority Group

Case study Communicating uncertainty

Building networks and language to communicate climate change risks

Professor Sarah Metcalfe

What are the challenges of representing the risks of climate change, between disciplines and to the public?

As part of its Science in Culture theme, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has funded an exploratory project at the 糖心原创 called ‘Representing and communicating uncertainty: climate change and risk’. This interdisciplinary project brings together academics from across the University in the Schools of Geography, Sociology and Social Policy, Mathematical Sciences and Biosciences. The project has three main goals:

To build understanding of the vocabulary and communication of climate change risks by bringing people from different groups together
To focus on extreme climatic events (e.g. floods, droughts), initially in a UK context
To build networks that will enable us to develop a vocabulary that is intelligible to different groups to improve communication and understanding.

"The debate around global climate change involves notions of uncertainty. However, different groups use the term in different ways, profoundly affecting views of the credibility of climate change science. This project seeks to explore how different groups (including scientists and businesses) use the language of uncertainty and whether we can bridge gaps in understanding caused by the distinctive vocabularies of different communities", says Professor Sarah Metcalfe

Highlights

A project workshop was held in April 2012, which brought together academics from a range of disciplines to explore ways in which they communicate uncertainty about climate change and its impacts. A key issue was to identify any barriers to communication between researchers (e.g. subject specific use of vocabulary; use of graphical or verbal material).

Session 1 (Climate change and risk: headline issues) included three presentations on issues identified by the project team as possible foci: flood risk (); human health, uncertainty and climate change () and drought ().

Session 2 (Methodological perspectives: establishing ‘internal’ lines of communication) included four presentations trying to reflect different disciplinary approaches to the issues of interest. These were: modelling (); probability theory (); language () and arts and humanities perspectives ().

Session 3 (Communicating with policy makers and wider publics) explored issues of communication in relation to the headline issues of flood risk, drought and human health.

A second workshop, held in June 2012, moved away from the academic perspective and brought together people from a range of groups who use or are interested in climate change information (companies, government agencies, NGOs, and the media). Future research aims to add an international dimension to our research and interaction with stakeholders.

Expertise

PI: (Geography) has expertise in earth and environmental dynamics.

Co-I: (Sociology and Social Policy) has expertise in metaphor and discourse analysis

Co-I: (Geography) has expertise in environmental history

Co-I: (Mathematical Sciences) has expertise in computational and applied maths

Co-I: (Geography) has expertise in flood, river and environmental management

Co-I: (Geography) has expertise in physical geography

Co-I: (Biosciences) has expertise in environmental modelling

Impact

Strong links have been established with Debbie Hill, Climate Change Manager at , as well as with the , the and other organisations.

Scale of research

This project focused on organising two workshops. Based on the outcomes of these workshop, we are in the process of designing a distinctive research agenda.

Funding

The project received an exploratory award of approximately £30,000.

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