Expert Judgment and Communication of Uncertainty

Knowledge built through the scientific study of climate is essential for informed decision-making. In the presence of irreducible uncertainty, the results of climate science must be gathered and synthesized through expert judgment. Experts communicate uncertainty to the public to support their understanding of the science and actionable options. Building on the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we introduce psychological research on judgment and decision-making with the goal of building a representation of scientific uncertainty that can facilitate communication between experts and the public. We propose that scientific representations of uncertainty can be recast as decision uncertainty, translating scientific knowledge into expected outcomes and their chances of occurrence. This approach is supported by broader evidence from the social sciences that the public does not view scientific results in terms of scientific methods (e.g., data quality and sample sizes). Instead, the public sees uncertainty in scientific results when they fail to reflect their lived experiences and personal perceptions. Additionally, while disagreement and debate are an essential part of scientific exploration, the communication of such disagreements may, in some cases, undermine confidence in the science itself rather than help calibrate perceptions of uncertainty.