Weather Forecast Uncertainty: The Pulic's Perspective

摘要

Mathematician John Allen Paulos once said, "Uncertainty is the only certainty there is." And perhaps nowhere in society is the factor of uncertainty as important as it is in the weather forecasts we use each day. The public depends on meteorologists to provide the most accurate information available to help them plan their daily lives. As such, the questions of how well the meteorological community is communicating uncertainty to the public and how the public is interpreting this information are important to the meteorological community, because the answers could help meteorologists and emergency planners get important, weather-related information to the public in an accurate, understandable, and useful way. rnIn an effort to begin answering these questions, a multidisciplinary group of researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Societal Impacts and Economic Benefits of Weather Information Collaborative Program, also known as the Societal Impacts Program (SIP), conducted a survey in 2006 to learn more about how members of the general public perceive weather forecast uncertainty information.