Improving the Efficacy of Warning Communication across the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise

The National Weather Service (NWS) issues watches and warnings for hazardous water and weather events for the protection of life and property. The NWS, along with the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise, which includes private meteorology firms and broadcast meteorologists, transmit these bulletins to the public across a diverse spectrum of visual platforms, including social media, webpages, email, and television.

Published research conducted into communicating actionable information (Williams and Esoco 2021; Weyrich, P., A. Scolobig, and A. Patt, 2019; Burgeno, J. N., and S. L. Joslyn, 2020; and Klockow, K. E., and S. A. Jasko, 2016) has indicated the challenges, benefits, and pitfalls of incorporating consistency of message across different visual platforms, and has explored the role that consistency plays in how the recipients of these messages decide to take action. To date, there remains no standard for color consistency for several of the most-used watches and warnings, including tornado watches/warnings, severe thunderstorm watches/warnings, and flash flood watches/warnings.

This presentation will showcase examples of inconsistency across platforms when communicating key warnings to the American public. It will also propose ideas for a path forward within the Enterprise, working collaboratively with AMS, to examine options for establishing a standard for the colors used to display these products on visual platforms. Such a proposed path would be built such that it would be endorsed by the professional organizations that represent the Enterprise: the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and the National Weather Association (NWA).