Measuring the Physical and Social Winds

The world's population is growing, its resources are dwindling, and the climate is changing in ways that will be hard to prevent or prepare for. Climate change presents intimidating challenges to people everywhere, especially to those in tropical countries where populations are dense and storms are frequent. But how do we get policymakers and the public to help fix the problem?

ICTP is currently sponsoring an annual targeted training activity on climate change issues. This year, the topic is the monsoon weather system in the tropics of the Eastern Hemisphere. The activities alternatively focus on monsoons, El Niño or the relationship between both.    

"El Niño is the biggest phenomenon that affects the climate in all tropical countries," said event organizer and climatologist Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University in the US. "Most of the developing countries are in the tropics." Climate scientists come to ICTP from these vulnerable areas to learn from each other about these climate systems.

Zahid, an event attendee, is a climate scientist from Maldives, an island-chain nation off the coast of India. He works for the Maldives Meteorological Service and attended the conference to get experience from experts on climate change and monsoons. Both topics are concerns for his home country, he said. "The last couple of years we have been experiencing flooding from high rainfall," said Zahid. "Also high waves are affecting Maldives. Just yesterday we had an incident where waves came to the capital island and flooded some areas."

Since arriving for the event, Zahid said the experience is inspiring him to learn more about climate modelling, a field he has no experience with. He also said he's learned some interesting facts, such as that the connection between monsoons and a climate pattern called the El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation has been decreasing in recent decades.

This was also the first such conference to include a workshop on framing discussions on climate change and sustainability for the public. This added workshop expands the focus of the event so that it's more interdisciplinary, including social sciences and life sciences as well as physical sciences. "It's not just a science problem. It's an economics problem. It's a policy problem," said Shukla.

Much of the discussion on science communication focused on how to discuss climate change with the public, as opposed to the more technical way it is discussed among scientists. Jim Kinter, the director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere studies, summarized the focus of that discussion as being about expressing simple, clear points repeated by trusted sources. "We have always assumed that by being good scientists with rigor and data to back all of our assertions and careful statements that are conservatively couched we are making ourselves trustable," said Kinter. But that has not been enough to gain trust with the public, whose values differ from culture to culture.

Furthermore, scientists seeking to affect policy have to express what their findings mean without confusing their messages with jargon that will get in the way of the public's understanding. "You don't have to think of it as speaking down to the other individual and dumbing down your conversation, but actually smartening the way you present the message," said Kinter. "It should also be provocative and stimulating so they ask you more questions."