How to Make Weather Information Beneficial for Society: A Multidisciplinary Story

While operational meteorologists have long leveraged developments in physical science to improve the services they provide, social, behavioral and economic science (SBES) research has had much less influence despite offering potential benefits on par with those of physical science. Allan Murphy famously stated in a 1993 Weather and Forecasting paper that weather forecasts possess no intrinsic value and that they only acquire value through their ability to influence the decisions made by users of the forecasts. How do we ensure that our forecasts are not only skillful but also useful?

Research on the economic impact of tornado warnings strongly suggests that tornado warnings cause significantly more economic damage than tornadoes themselves do. Yet meteorologists have historically not considered the costs imposed by our watches and warnings. Actions that maximize the protection of life can impose substantial costs on the economy. Many users of National Weather Service (NWS) information are making risk management decisions that necessarily involve significant tradeoffs that a disinterested delivery of deterministic forecast information cannot adequately inform. NWS meteorologists will need to understand user decision contexts at a depth that some may consider to be outside the lane of the operational meteorologist. Furthermore, there currently exists a tension between the meteorologist’s desire not to make decisions on behalf of the user and the widely accepted practice of disseminating action statements like “Take cover now!”

This talk will highlight select results from SBES that are helping inform a shift in how the NWS delivers information to achieve our threefold mission of protecting life, protecting property and enhancing the national economy and provide a vision of how meteorologists can “stay in our lane” while maximizing decision quality among our users.