IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i5p2466-d505421.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Evolution of Communicating the Uncertainty of Climate Change to Policymakers: A Study of IPCC Synthesis Reports

Author

Listed:
  • Tomas Molina

    (Applied Physics Department, University of Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Ernest Abadal

    (Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media, University of Barcelona, 08014 Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on climate change have served to alert both the public and policymakers about the scope of the predicted changes and the effects they would have on natural and economic systems. The first IPCC report was published in 1990, since which time a further four have been produced. The aim of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers in order to determine the degree of certainty associated with the statements they contain. For each of the reports we analyzed all statements containing expressions indicating the corresponding level of confidence. The aggregated results show a shift over time towards higher certainty levels, implying a “Call to action” (from 32.8% of statements in IPCC2 to 70.2% in IPCC5). With regard to the international agreements drawn up to tackle climate change, the growing level of confidence expressed in the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers reports might have been a relevant factor in the history of decision making.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomas Molina & Ernest Abadal, 2021. "The Evolution of Communicating the Uncertainty of Climate Change to Policymakers: A Study of IPCC Synthesis Reports," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-12, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:5:p:2466-:d:505421
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2466/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2466/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arjan Wardekker & Susanne Lorenz, 2019. "The visual framing of climate change impacts and adaptation in the IPCC assessment reports," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 273-292, September.
    2. Saffron O’Neill & Hywel T. P. Williams & Tim Kurz & Bouke Wiersma & Maxwell Boykoff, 2015. "Dominant frames in legacy and social media coverage of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(4), pages 380-385, April.
    3. Tatyana Deryugina & Olga Shurchkov, 2016. "The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-14, April.
    4. David V. Budescu & Han-Hui Por & Stephen B. Broomell & Michael Smithson, 2014. "The interpretation of IPCC probabilistic statements around the world," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(6), pages 508-512, June.
    5. Lau, Lee Chung & Lee, Keat Teong & Mohamed, Abdul Rahman, 2012. "Global warming mitigation and renewable energy policy development from the Kyoto Protocol to the Copenhagen Accord—A comment," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(7), pages 5280-5284.
    6. repec:pal:palcom:v:2016:y:2016:i:palcomms201658:p:16058- is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Radoslav S. Dimitrov, 2016. "The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Behind Closed Doors," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 16(3), pages 1-11, August.
    8. Emily Boyd & Esteve Corbera & Manuel Estrada, 2008. "UNFCCC negotiations (pre-Kyoto to COP-9): what the process says about the politics of CDM-sinks," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 95-112, June.
    9. Lipshitz, Raanan & Strauss, Orna, 1997. "Coping with Uncertainty: A Naturalistic Decision-Making Analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 149-163, February.
    10. Richard H. Moss & Jae A. Edmonds & Kathy A. Hibbard & Martin R. Manning & Steven K. Rose & Detlef P. van Vuuren & Timothy R. Carter & Seita Emori & Mikiko Kainuma & Tom Kram & Gerald A. Meehl & John F, 2010. "The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment," Nature, Nature, vol. 463(7282), pages 747-756, February.
    11. David E. Bell, 1985. "Disappointment in Decision Making Under Uncertainty," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 1-27, February.
    12. Candice Howarth & James Painter, 2016. "Exploring the science–policy interface on climate change: The role of the IPCC in informing local decision-making in the UK," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 2(1), pages 1-12, December.
    13. G. J. S. Hollin & W. Pearce, 2015. "Tension between scientific certainty and meaning complicates communication of IPCC reports," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(8), pages 753-756, August.
    14. Scott Janzwood, 2020. "Confident, likely, or both? The implementation of the uncertainty language framework in IPCC special reports," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 1655-1675, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. A. Kause & W. Bruine de Bruin & J. Persson & H. Thorén & L. Olsson & A. Wallin & S. Dessai & N. Vareman, 2022. "Confidence levels and likelihood terms in IPCC reports: a survey of experts from different scientific disciplines," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 1-18, July.
    2. Melissa K. Merry & Hailey Mattingly, 2024. "Framing the climate crisis: Dread and fatalism in media and interest group responses to IPCC reports," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 41(1), pages 83-103, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arjan Wardekker & Susanne Lorenz, 2019. "The visual framing of climate change impacts and adaptation in the IPCC assessment reports," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 273-292, September.
    2. Michael D. Gerst & Melissa A. Kenney & Irina Feygina, 2021. "Improving the usability of climate indicator visualizations through diagnostic design principles," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 1-22, June.
    3. Minal Pathak & Joyashree Roy & Shaurya Patel & Shreya Some & Purvi Vyas & Nandini Das & Priyadarshi Shukla, 2021. "Communicating climate change findings from IPCC reports: insights from outreach events in India," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 168(3), pages 1-14, October.
    4. A. Kause & W. Bruine de Bruin & J. Persson & H. Thorén & L. Olsson & A. Wallin & S. Dessai & N. Vareman, 2022. "Confidence levels and likelihood terms in IPCC reports: a survey of experts from different scientific disciplines," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 1-18, July.
    5. Peter Horton & Garrett W. Brown, 2018. "Integrating evidence, politics and society: a methodology for the science–policy interface," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-5, December.
    6. David R. Mandel & Daniel Irwin, 2021. "Tracking accuracy of strategic intelligence forecasts: Findings from a long‐term Canadian study," Futures & Foresight Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(3-4), September.
    7. de Queiroz, Anderson Rodrigo, 2016. "Stochastic hydro-thermal scheduling optimization: An overview," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 382-395.
    8. Colson, Gérard, 1993. "Prenons-nous assez de risque dans les théories du risque?," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 69(1), pages 111-141, mars.
    9. Cai, Yiyong & Newth, David & Finnigan, John & Gunasekera, Don, 2015. "A hybrid energy-economy model for global integrated assessment of climate change, carbon mitigation and energy transformation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 381-395.
    10. Chateauneuf, Alain & Eichberger, Jurgen & Grant, Simon, 2007. "Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind: Neo-additive capacities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 538-567, November.
    11. Chateau, J. & Dellink, R. & Lanzi, E. & Magne, B., 2012. "Long-term economic growth and environmental pressure: reference scenarios for future global projections," Conference papers 332249, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    12. Jean-Michel Benkert, 2015. "Bilateral trade with loss-averse agents," ECON - Working Papers 188, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Jul 2022.
    13. Karle, Heiko & Schumacher, Heiner & Vølund, Rune, 2023. "Consumer loss aversion and scale-dependent psychological switching costs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 214-237.
    14. van Dijk, Wilco W. & van der Pligt, Joop, 1997. "The Impact of Probability and Magnitude of Outcome on Disappointment and Elation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 277-284, March.
    15. Kalwij, Adriaan, 2018. "The effects of competition outcomes on health: Evidence from the lifespans of U.S. Olympic medalists," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 276-286.
    16. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L’Haridon & Horst Zank, 2010. "Separating curvature and elevation: A parametric probability weighting function," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 39-65, August.
    17. Vaida Kaduskeviciute & Sigitas Urbonavicius, 2019. "Webrooming: A Way of Dealing with Uncertainties in Purchasing," Tržište/Market, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 31(2), pages 139-152.
    18. Qin, Jie, 2015. "A model of regret, investor behavior, and market turbulence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 150-174.
    19. Thomas Buser, 2016. "The Impact of Losing in a Competition on the Willingness to Seek Further Challenges," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3439-3449, December.
    20. Venkatesh, Viswanath & Maruping, Likoebe M. & Brown, Susan A., 2006. "Role of time in self-prediction of behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 160-176, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:5:p:2466-:d:505421. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.