Color Blindness in the Weather Enterprise: Discussion and a Look at Solutions

Color blindness is a concern that should be of the utmost importance to the weather enterprise. Roughly one in twelve males, and one in two hundred females, are affected, and weather communication implications abound for these individuals. Color blind individuals are most commonly unable to distinguish between the reds and greens - and also, to a lesser extent, blues and yellows - that meteorologists frequently use in radar displays and other meteorological visualizations.

Furthering work that was begun last year, we are experimenting with existing meteorological color scales to assess the feasibility and development of generalizable color-blind-friendly spectrums for use in data displays. These would allow better environments for working meteorologists who are color blind, while color blind members of the general public would benefit from meteorologists being able to effectively communicate weather information to them.

We plan to share some of our findings with AMS Broadcast attendees. We hope that attendees will not only engage in further discussions on color blindness, but also take the knowledge gained from us back to their workplace for consideration in their graphic creation workflows.