Communications about uncertainty in scientific climate-related findings: A qualitative systematic review

We undertake a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature to arrive at recommendations for shaping communications about uncertainty in scientific climate-related findings. Climate communications often report on scientific findings that contain different sources of uncertainty. Potential users of these communications are members of the general public, as well as decision makers and climate advisors from government, business and non-governmental institutions worldwide. Many of these users may lack formal training in climate science or related disciplines. This dataset is associated with a systematic review of the English-language peer-reviewed empirical literature from cognitive and behavioral sciences and related fields, which examines how users perceive communications about uncertainty in scientific climate-related findings. This dataset includes 89 studies of communications about uncertainty in scientific climate-related findings, taken from 53 articles, identified in the databases Web of Science, SCPUS and PsychInfo. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) Any reported studies should involve samples consisting of members of the general public, or decision makers and climate advisors from government, business and non-governmental institutions worldwide; (2) Articles should report on one or more empirical studies or reviews of empirical studies, in which users received communications about climate change consequences in numerical, verbal or visual presentation formats, and including some form of uncertainty in scientific climate-related findings, rather than a precise value or a probabilistic point estimate21,45 (Figure 1); (3) Any reported studies should experimentally compare responses to such communications so as to assess effects of communications on users’ responses. They may also compare responses to communications which include uncertainty to those communications without uncertainty; (4) Although analyses of differences in users’ characteristics such as for example climate change beliefs or environmental worldviews, political ideology, numerical skills or other user characteristics (Figure 1) were required for answering research question 2, articles were included even if these characteristics were not examined. Studies were coded according to characteristics of the decision context, including the presented climate change consequence, the presentation format, and the source of uncertainty. Coding also included characteristics of the users and how they were measured, if at all, including climate change beliefs and environmental worldviews, political ideology, numerical skills, and other user characteristics.