Julie Demuth: Project Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado
Despite tremendous advances in weather forecasting, people still experience significant harm to life, property, and well-being from extreme weather. This is due in part to challenges that members of the public face in obtaining, interpreting, and responding to risk information. In this presentation, I will discuss efforts to examine risk communication, assessment, and responses to extreme weather through different research methods, with different populations, and for different weather hazards. I will discuss how, using survey data (including with embedded experimental designs), we can better understand the influence of different risk messages and of people’s different experiences on their risk perceptions, efficacy, attitudes, and protective behavioral intentions. Building on this research, I will then discuss the dynamic ways that people evaluate and respond to weather threats as they evolve in time and space. Finally, I will introduce a research effort that investigates how National Weather Service forecasters assess and communicate hazardous weather risks.
