Development of an interdisciplinary, multi-method approach to seasonal climate forecast communication at the local scale

Bridging the gap between seasonal climate forecast development and science communication best practice is a critical step towards the integration of climate information into decision-making practices for enhanced community resilience to climate variability. Recent efforts in the physical sciences have focused on the development of seasonal climate forecasts, with increased emphasis on tailoring this information to user needs at the local scale. Advances in science communication have progressed understandings of how to leverage subjective decision-making processes and trust to communicate risky, probabilistic information. Yet, seasonal climate forecasts remain underutilized in local decision-making, due to challenging divides between the physical and social sciences and the lack of an approach that combines expert knowledge across disciplines. We outline an interdisciplinary, multi-method approach to communicate local-scale predictive information by advancing a co-produced “package” that pairs a highly visual bulletin with public engagement sessions, both developed with direct user-developer engagement, leveraging existing networks and novel inclusion of uncertainty through locally relevant analogies to enhance the understanding of probabilistic information. Systematic observations revealed some level of understanding among the target audience, yet identified major processes of confusion that inhibit forecast utility. Probabilistic predictions communicated in reference to “normal” years proved to be an unintelligible comparison for individuals, given preferences for certainty in interpreting risk-related information. Our approach addresses key gaps in the literature and serves as a framework for bridging the disconnect between forecast development and science communication to advance communication and integration of climate predictions for community benefit.