The Other Uncertainty: Social, Political, and Cultural Forms of Uncertainty in Weather Contexts
Uncertainty pervades the prediction and experience of hazardous weather. Uncertainty emerges in the observations of weather, the development of weather models, the construction and communication of forecasts, the interpretation of forecasts and perceptions of weather risks, and in the complex process of responding to and recovering from hazardous weather. Uncertainty associated with meteorological processes and our knowledge of them is commonly considered and studied. Yet, there are myriad profound and entangled sources of individual, social, and cultural ambiguity that emerge, interact, operate, and propagate throughout the lifecycle of hazardous weather events, which are far less understood.
As part of the annual AMS meeting, the Scholarly Borderlands initiative of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), in partnership with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is convening a special daylong set of sessions titled “The Other Uncertainty: Social, Political, and Cultural Forms of Uncertainty in Weather Contexts” on Monday, 7 January 2019. The special sessions will begin with two panel sessions with 10 invited speakers. The speakers are an interdisciplinary and intersectoral group of scholars who represent fundamental and applied expertise from anthropology, hazards and disasters, judgment and decision making, meteorology, public health, science and technology studies, and information science. Following the morning panels, a session with traditional research presentations will be held in the afternoon.
These sessions are joint among the 14th Symposium on Societal Applications: Policy, Research and Practice; the Seventh Symposium on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise; and the Seventh Symposium on Building a Weather-Ready Nation. The special sessions are a critical component of the overarching AMS meeting theme of Understanding and Building Resilience to Extreme Events by Being Interdisciplinary, International, and Inclusive (III).
Here are full details of the three-part sessions on Monday, 7 January.
Location: Phoenix Convention Center - West and North Buildings - North 226AB
- Dr. Joe Trainor, Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration and Director of the Disaster Science and Management Program at University of Delaware
- Rebecca Moulton, Meteorologist, Hurricane Liaison, Emergency Management Planning FEMA
- Dr. Amber Wutich, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Global Health, Arizona State University
- Melissa Bica, Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at University of Colorado, Boulder, and research affiliate with the Natural Hazards Center
- Dr. Scott Knowles, Professor and Department Chair of the Department of History at Drexel University (Discussant)
Location: Phoenix Convention Center - West and North Buildings - North 226AB
- Dr. Susan Joslyn, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Decision Making with Uncertainty Lab at University of Washington
- Robert Soden, Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at University of Colorado, Boulder, and Board Member of Co-Risk Labs
- Tamara Marcus, PhD student in Natural Resources in Earth System Science at University of New Hampshire
- Dr. Keri Lubell, Team Lead for Research and Evaluation in the Emergency Risk Communication Branch (ERCB), U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Dr. Jenniffer Santos-Hernandez, Assistant Research Professor, for Centro de Investigaciones Sociales (CIS-Center for Social Research), University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (Discussant)
Location: Phoenix Convention Center - West and North Buildings - North 226AB
- 2:00 PM TJ3.1 The Influence of Cultural Worldviews and Risk Perceptions on Severe Weather Preparation Aimee Franklin, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; and J. Le, M. Brucks, and M. A. Shafer
- 2:15 PM TJ3.2 "Understanding the Public's Response to Uncertainty Through an Interdisciplinary Analysis" Anas A Askar, Howard University, Washington, DC; and T. Adams
- 2:30 PM TJ3.3 When Uncertainty is Certain: The Creation and Effects of Amiable Distrust Between Emergency Managers and Forecast Information in the Southeastern U.S. Rachael N. Cross, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; and D. LaDue, T. Kloss, and S. Ernst
- 2:45 PM TJ3.4 Weathering Natural Disasters: Forecasting, Anticipation and ‘Out-of-Model Uncertainties’ in the Humanitarian Sector Sara de Wit Jr., Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Oxford, United Kingdom; and T. Pforr Jr.
- 3:00 PM TJ3.5 Uncertainty and Consistency: Key Dimensions in Weather/Hazard Messaging Susan A. Jasko, California Univ. of Pennsylvania, California, PA; and L. Myers
- 3:15 PM TJ3.6 Exploring Uncertainty in Vulnerability and its Usability in Decision-Making Olga Wilhelmi, NCAR, Boulder, CO; and P. Romero Lankao and I. Pichardo
- 3:30 PM TJ3.7 Communicating Uncertainty in Weather, Climate, and Hydrological Predictions: Recent Progress and a Path Forward (Core Science Keynote) Rebecca E. Morss, NCAR, Boulder, CO
