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Dealing with Inconsistent Weather Warnings: Effects on Warning Quality and Intended Actions

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Dealing with Inconsistent Weather Warnings: Effects on Warning Quality and Intended Actions Research Collection Journal Article Dealing with inconsistent weather warnings: effects on warning quality and intended actions Author(s): Weyrich, Philippe; Scolobig, Anna; Patt, Anthony Publication Date: 2019-10 Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000291292 Originally published in: Meteorological Applications 26(4), http://doi.org/10.1002/met.1785 Rights / License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use. ETH Library Received: 11 July 2018 Revised: 12 December 2018 Accepted: 31 January 2019 Published on: 28 March 2019 DOI: 10.1002/met.1785 RESEARCH ARTICLE Dealing with inconsistent weather warnings: effects on warning quality and intended actions Philippe Weyrich | Anna Scolobig | Anthony Patt Climate Policy Group, Department of Environmental Systems Science, Swiss Federal In the past four decades, the private weather forecast sector has been developing Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Zurich, next to National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, resulting in additional Switzerland weather providers. This plurality has led to a critical duplication of public weather Correspondence warnings. For a specific event, different providers disseminate warnings that are Philippe Weyrich, Climate Policy Group, Department of Environmental Systems Science, more or less severe, or that are visualized differently, leading to inconsistent infor- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH mation that could impact perceived warning quality and response. So far, past Zurich), 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. research has not studied the influence of inconsistent information from multiple Email: [email protected] providers. This knowledge gap is addressed here. An inconsistency matrix was Funding information Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. developed and employed to categorize the level of inconsistency across multiple warnings. The matrix provides warning pairs inconsistent in visualization, text or both. A survey experiment was conducted in Switzerland (N = 1,335). The results show that half of the people who received warnings from different providers for the same event indicated that these were inconsistent. The evaluation of warning quality and intended actions in a decision scenario characterized by two severe rainfall warnings shows the negative impacts of inconsistency. For example, con- sistent warnings are least confusing and inconsistent visual and textual warnings are most confusing. However, there are no significant differences in the effects of inconsistent textual information compared to inconsistent visual information on warning quality and intended actions. These findings offer empirical justification to enhance co-operation between public and private weather providers. To improve warnings, the providers should find an agreement to be consistent either in the text or in the visualization. KEYWORDS decision-making, warning communication, warning inconsistency, warning quality 1 | INTRODUCTION (MeteoSwiss), the national broadcasting service (SRF Meteo) and two public providers (MeteoNews and Meteo- On a rainy day in November 2017, several different weather centrale). Table 1 summarizes the different visualizations information providers issued to the general public a variety and interpretations (amount of rainfall per time period). of extreme weather warnings for the southernmost part of What actually fell that day was 50 mm, meaning that only Switzerland around Lake Lugano (a region known as Sotto- the MeteoSwiss forecast was correct. However, the question ceneri). Four warnings were issued by four different Swiss that this research examines is whether the inconsistency of weather providers: the national meteorological service the warnings could have made people doubt the whole This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Authors. Meteorological Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the Royal Meteorological Society. Meteorol Appl. 2019;26:569–583. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/met 569 570 WEYRICH ET AL. TABLE 1 Warnings issued by four Swiss weather providers on a rainy day inconsistent information is likely to decrease the likelihood in November that people take adaptive action compared to consistent Visualization Interpretation Time information. To test the hypotheses, a randomized control Provider colour (mm) period (hr) survey with 1,335 participants was conducted in Switzer- MeteoSwiss (MCH) Yellow >70 24 land. This provides empirical evidence (lacking in the litera- – MeteoNews Orange 60 90 48 ture) and demonstrates the potential for improvements in Meteocentrale Purple <100 24 warning design and process to help to improve understand- SRG SSR (SRF Yellow 60–100 24 Meteo) ing and appreciation of danger. 2 | LITERATURE BACKGROUND information package, easily available on mobile devices, and choose not to respond to any of them. If indeed the rainfall Generally, the risk communication literature suggests that had been higher resulting in flooding, such a course of action the information provided must be consistent and spread could have had serious negative consequences. through multiple channels in order to lead to effective Over the last decades, a private sector meteorology decision-making. For example, Mileti and Fitzpatrick (1992) industry has developed next to National Meteorological found that risk communication during an event was effective and Hydrological Services (NMHS) (Pettifer, 2015). The pri- because it was a process of multiple messages (that were vate weather sector is becoming much more involved in consistent) delivered through multiple channels emanating nearly all elements of the weather value chain from observa- from multiple sources. This confirmed findings of prior stud- tions to tailored weather products (Thorpe, 2016). These ies (Hovland and Weiss, 1951; Drabek and Boggs, 1968; authors state that, even though these recent developments Mileti and Beck, 1975). However, these studies focused on have led to improvements in forecast quality and weather identical messages that were communicated differently, such services, they have also resulted in more negative outcomes, as through a trustworthy or untrustworthy communicator especially when public weather warnings are duplicated (Hovland and Weiss, 1951) or through different channels (Thorpe, 2016). In Europe, all NMHS are obliged to issue (written, electronic) and sources (friends, officials) (Mileti official and authoritative weather warnings on behalf of their and Fitzpatrick, 1992). Mileti and Peek (2000), who governments to warn public authorities and the public at reviewed the process of public response to warnings of a large of hazardous weather. In addition to these official nuclear power plant accident, highlighted that effective warnings of the NMHS, private weather companies can also warning messages include information that is clear, specific, publish and disseminate their own weather warnings. Differ- accurate, certain and consistent. Moreover, consistency must ences between map colour-coding, warning thresholds and be ensured within messages, as well as across different mes- weather models increase the risk of apparent (or actual) sages. They summarize previous research which found that inconsistencies in the warning information disseminated by warning messages promote the formation of accurate percep- different weather providers for a specific point in time. tions only if they are consistent with other publicly In southern Africa, the belief in counter-productiveness announced advisements (Perry and Green, 1982; Quarantelli, of sometimes contradictory national forecasts led to the 1984; Drabek, 1999). development of the first regional Climate Outlook Forum However, the effect of inconsistent information has (COF) in Zimbabwe as early as 2007 (Patt et al., 2007). The largely been understudied. Even though Lindell and Perry COF addressed the issue of trustworthiness by negotiating a (2012) acknowledge that multiple sources often deliver con- single, multinational, consensus forecast for the region of flicting messages that require searching for additional infor- southern Africa. Even though the COF members did not pro- mation to clarify the confusion, they do not study how vide empirical evidence, they showed that the belief in people are affected by inconsistent information, for instance, counter-productiveness of inconsistent national information when there is no time to consult new information to resolve is a recognized problem and has led to changes. This study the ambiguity. In the context of climate forecasts, inconsis- will provide some evidence that the COF members were right tency has been identified as a cause for concern in terms of even though the context is different. To date, there has been agricultural decision-making related to climate change adap- little empirical evidence examining the influence of inconsis- tation (Garrett et al., 2013; Bhatta and Aggarwal, 2016). To tent information on warning evaluation and response, and date, only Losee and Joslyn (2018) appear to have provided research addressing the impact of warning information from direct evidence of the impact of weather forecast inconsis- multiple providers is completely missing.
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