Abstract
To develop effective climate change policy, decision-makers need to have the best possible understanding of the available climate science. The IPCC Assessment Reports therefore aim to lay the foundation for informed political decision-making by providing policy-relevant information. But how successful are IPCC reports at communicating key findings? Although IPCC reports display key information in graphs, the interpretation of such graphs has received little attention. Here we provide an empirical evaluation of IPCC graph comprehension among IPCC target audience (N = 110), (political) decision-makers from climate-related (non-)governmental organizations from 54 countries, and a comparative sample of German junior diplomats, representing future international decision-makers (N = 33). We assess comprehension of current climate change risk visualizations using two IPCC graphs, one that employs principles of intuitive design, and one that violates principles of intuitive design. Results showed that (i) while a minority of IPCC target audience misinterpreted the intuitive graph, (ii) the majority of participants systematically misinterpreted the counter-intuitive graph, drawing the opposite conclusion from what was meant to be conveyed by the graph, despite (iii) having high confidence in the accuracy of their interpretation. Since misinterpretation of IPCC graphs does not allow for optimal use of the scientific information for policy-making, the results emphasize the importance of IPCC graphs that follow the principles of intuitive design.
Highlights
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, and its risks
The IPCC target audience included a sample of climate change decision-makers (N = 110), n = 67 expert political decision-makers from climate-related governmental organizations, and n = 43 experts from climate-related non-governmental organizations from various sectors such as environmental protection, urban planning, energy business or economic development
This study provides an empirical evaluation of the comprehension of IPCC graphs among IPCC target audience, decision-makers from climate-related governmental organizations and climate-related non-governmental organizations, as well as a comparative sample of future diplomats
Summary
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Helen Fischer1,7 , Karlijn L van den Broek2,3 , Kilian Ramisch4,5 and Yasmina Okan6 Keywords: climate change, IPCC graphs, objective and subjective comprehension, metacognition
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