Confidence levels and likelihood terms in IPCC reports: a survey of experts from different scientific disciplines

A. Kause (), W. Bruine de Bruin, J. Persson, H. Thorén, L. Olsson, A. Wallin, S. Dessai and N. Vareman
Additional contact information
A. Kause: Leuphana University Lüneburg
W. Bruine de Bruin: Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, and Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California
J. Persson: Lund University
H. Thorén: University of Helsinki
L. Olsson: Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies LUCSUS, Lund University
A. Wallin: Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University
S. Dessai: University of Leeds
N. Vareman: Lund University

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 173, issue 1, No 2, 18 pages

Abstract: Abstract Scientific assessments, such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inform policymakers and the public about the state of scientific evidence and related uncertainties. We studied how experts from different scientific disciplines who were authors of IPCC reports, interpret the uncertainty language recommended in the Guidance Note for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties. This IPCC guidance note discusses how to use confidence levels to describe the quality of evidence and scientific agreement, as well likelihood terms to describe the probability intervals associated with climate variables. We find that (1) physical science experts were more familiar with the IPCC guidance note than other experts, and they followed it more often; (2) experts’ confidence levels increased more with perceptions of evidence than with agreement; (3) experts’ estimated probability intervals for climate variables were wider when likelihood terms were presented with “medium confidence” rather than with “high confidence” and when seen in context of IPCC sentences rather than out of context, and were only partly in agreement with the IPCC guidance note. Our findings inform recommendations for communications about scientific evidence, assessments, and related uncertainties.

Keywords: Uncertainty; Communication; Confidence; Probability; Expert judgment; Scientific assessment; IPCC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03382-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:173:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03382-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03382-3

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().