Characterizing uncertainty in expert assessments

Ozone depletion and the West Antarctic ice sheet

Bibliographic Data

ID12929521
AuthorsJessica O’reilly (0000-0002-0281-5903, St. John's University), Keynyn Brysse (Princeton University, corresponding author), Michael Oppenheimer (0000-0002-9708-5914, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars), Naomi Oreskes (0000-0001-6122-9843, University of California San Diego)
Year2011
Volume2
Issue5
Pages728-743
Publication date2011-07-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1757-7780 • E-ISSN: 1757-7799
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/wcc.135
OpenAlexW2114286906
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited75

Large‐scale assessments have become an important vehicle for organizing, interpreting, and presenting scientific information relevant to environmental policy. At the same time, identifying and evaluating scientific uncertainty with respect to the very questions these assessments were designed to address has become more difficult, as ever more complex problems involving greater portions of the Earth system and longer timescales have emerged at the science–policy interface. In this article, we explore expert judgments about uncertainty in two recent cases: the assessment of stratospheric ozone depletion, and the assessment of the response of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) to global warming. These assessments were fairly adept at characterizing one type of uncertainty in models (parameter uncertainty), but faced much greater difficulty in dealing with structural model uncertainty, sometimes entirely avoiding grappling with it. In the absence of viable models, innovative approaches were developed in the ozone case for consolidating information about highly uncertain future outcomes, whereas little such progress has been made thus far in the case of WAIS. Both cases illustrate the problem of expert disagreement, suggesting that future assessments need to develop improved approaches to representing internal conflicts of judgment, in order to produce a more complete evaluation of uncertainty. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 728–743 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.135 This article is categorized under: Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Integrated Assessment by Expert Panels

Antarctic ice sheet · Business · Cartography · Climate change · Climatology · Cryosphere · Environmental resource management · Expert elicitation · Geography · Ice sheet · Meteorology · Operations research · Order (exchange · Ozone · Ozone Depletion · Scale (ratio · Sea ice · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Computer Science · Engineering · Environmental Science · Risk Perception and Management · Geology

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