Article
Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(2017)
Abstract
We develop a simple heuristic to measure local changes in climate based on the timing of record high and low temperatures. The metric shows local cooling and warming in the United States and captures two aspects of experiential learning that influence how the public perceives a change in climate: recency weighting and an emphasis on extreme events. We find that skepticism about whether the Earth is warming is greater in areas exhibiting cooling relative to areas that have warmed and that recent cooling can offset historical warming. This experiential basis for skepticism of climate change identifies obstacles to communicating ongoing changes in climate to the public and how these communications might be improved.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2017
DOI
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1607032113
Citation Information
Peter D. Howe. "Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 114 Iss. 1 (2017) p. 67 - 71 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter_howe/38/