Related papers: Uncertainty in climate science and climate policy

Impact of academic research onto the non-academic world is of increasing importance as authorities seek return on public investment. Impact opens new opportunities for what are known as "professional services": as scientometrical tools…

Numerical climate models are used to project future climate change due to both anthropogenic and natural causes. Differences between projections from different climate models are a major source of uncertainty about future climate. Emergent…

Despite major advances in climate science over the last 30 years, persistent uncertainties in projections of future climate change remain. Climate projections are produced with increasingly complex models which attempt to represent key…

The impacts of climate change are intensifying existing vulnerabilities and disparities within urban communities around the globe, as extreme weather events, including floods and heatwaves, are becoming more frequent and severe,…

With a folk understanding that political polarization refers to socio-political divisions within a society, many have proclaimed that we are more divided than ever. In this account, polarization has been blamed for populism, the erosion of…

Scientific and technological advances in numerical modelling have improved the quality of climate predictions over recent decades, but predictive skill remains limited in many aspects. Extreme events such as heat and cold waves, droughts,…

During decades the study of networks has been divided between the efforts of social scientists and natural scientists, two groups of scholars who often do not see eye to eye. In this review I present an effort to mutually translate the work…

Modern science is formally structured around scholarly publication, where scientific knowledge is canonized through citation. Precisely how citations are given and accrued can provide information about the value of discovery, the history of…

Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the…

There is great uncertainty about future climate conditions and the appropriate policies for managing interactions between the climate and the economy. We develop a multidimensional computational model to examine how uncertainties and risks…

Obtaining reliable answers to the major scientific questions raised by climate change in time to take appropriate action gives added urgency to the open access program.

In the past several years, scientists have issued a series of warnings about the threats of climate change and other forms of environmental disruption. Here, we provide a scientists' warning on how technology affects these issues.…

The current science of cities can provide a useful foundation for future urban policies, provided that these proposals have been validated by correct observations of the diversity of situations in the world. However, international…

This is a white paper in response to the National Academy of Sciences "Exoplanet Science Strategy" call. We summarize recent advances in theoretical habitability studies and argue that such studies will remain important for guiding and…

Changing institutions is an integral part of an academic life. Yet little is known about the mobility patterns of scientists at an institutional level and how these career choices affect scientific outcomes. Here, we examine over 420,000…

At many universities, astronomy is a popular way for non-science majors to fulfill a general education requirement. Because general-education astronomy may be the only college-level science course taken by these students, it is the last…

Uncertainty defines our age: it shapes climate, finance, technology, and society, yet remains profoundly misunderstood. We oscillate between the illusion of control and the paralysis of fatalism. This paper reframes uncertainty not as…

The selection of research topics by scientists can be viewed as an exploration process conducted by individuals with cognitive limitations traversing a complex cognitive landscape influenced by both individual and social factors. While…

Citizen science often requires volunteers to perform low-skill tasks such as counting and documenting en- vironmental features. In this work, we contend that these tasks do not adequately meet the needs of citizen scientists motivated by…

Collective and individual action necessary to address climate change hinges on the public's understanding of the relevant scientific findings. In this study, we examine the use of scientific sources in the course of 14 years of public…