T197 Understanding Risk and Communicating Uncertainty to the Public
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
208B
COMMUNICATING UNCERTAINTY IN CLIMATE SCIENCES: PERSPECTIVE FROM THE PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY
Paper number: T197-3
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 1:55 PM – 2:15 PM
Authors
Abstract
In the wake of punishing heat waves, historic droughts, extensive flooding and extraordinary melt activity on Greenland, many are asking if we are seeing long-predicted results of climate change, caused primarily by man-made heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. Recent studies on extreme events found in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society suggest that such events may not be attributable to weather variability alone. They also echo warnings issued by scientists for decades.