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Abstract

In recent decades, meteorology has made great progress in producing reliable probabilistic forecasts. However, forecasts and especially weather warnings continue to be communicated almost exclusively in deterministic terms. The failure to communicate probabilistic information not only hinders shared decision-making between meteorologists, organisations and the public. This practice also does not take into account that probabilistic information may well be preferred by laypersons, may increase confidence in forecasts and may lead to better decisions. For the practical use of uncertainty information, it must be clarified, for example, under which conditions it is helpful, how it should be processed verbally and graphically, and which institutional and operational questions must be clarified. In this presentation, we present exemplary results of our own social science studies within the framework of the WEXICOM project of the Hans Ertel Centre for Weather Research (HErZ) on the following questions: What do users know about the uncertainty of forecasts? What attitudes do users have towards providing uncertainty information, e.g. do they want to receive this information? How is uncertainty communicated verbally? Which graphical representations do users prefer? At what probability would users react? What influence do space and time references of uncertainty information have on the understanding of the information and how do they influence the use for decisions? Finally, we present the challenges and new approaches for the communication and use of uncertainty information in weather forecasting.