The gap between attitudes and action within the US geoscience community’s response to natural hazards

Abstract

With the impacts of climate-related hazards, such as extreme heat, heavy precipitation, drought, flooding, wildfires, tropical storms, and severe weather becoming more intense and frequent, exposure to these hazards continues to increase as population growth expands into areas prone to higher hazard risk such as coasts, wetlands, and wild-lands. Despite these trends, adaptation efforts remain a patchwork of local initiatives implemented primarily at the individual and household level and are not enough to keep pace with increasing hazard impacts. Most climate communication strategies have targeted non-expert audiences to raise awareness and increase adaptive behaviours. However, studies exploring how climate scientists are engaging professionally and personally with climate change impacts are rare. A key aspect of this study is that it specifically focuses on geoscientists, a cohort of experts who study and understand the causes, impacts, and risks of natural hazards. Their professional work provides a distinct perspective on the tangible consequences of climate change. This study is part of a larger research project which examined discipline-level engagement (i.e., funding, research, publications) and professional engagement (i.e., teaching, learning, work) across the geosciences in the United States. We review these larger trends in discipline-level and professional engagement with natural hazards and focus the bulk of this paper on an extended line of inquiry that assesses the integration of expert hazards knowledge into geoscientists’ personal decision-making processes. The results of this study indicated a knowledge-action gap related to hazard engagement that appears to be systemic across the geoscience discipline within the United States. This study provides a baseline for future research into evaluation of climate expert behaviours and actions as it relates to climate hazards. It also provides a new communication simulation that can be tested internationally and compared to this study’s results. In addition, the simulation can be incorporated into in-person settings to facilitate discussion about climate hazard risk considerations.