How To Explain Extreme Weather Without the Fear Factor 

As disaster after disaster fills our news screens, screaming danger, instilling fear, and exposing personal grief and property loss, it’s increasingly hard to read, watch, or hear. And that’s not necessarily a good thing, climate change communication experts say. If we want others to take action to protect their communities and environment, fear factor isn’t the ticket. 

Starting with a good frame (like protecting habitats we call home) and ending with a solution that resonates with a community (like clearing flammable brush to keep neighbors safe) is important. These bookends help people relate and create a sense of collective agency. 

Using simple metaphors to get the science across also helps. “One of the first metaphors used for climate change was ‘global warming,’ by the Bush Administration,” says Richelle Tanner, a social scientist who has been working on climate messaging for more than a decade, and who now teaches at Chapman University. “It was designed to compartmentalize and diminish climate effects in the eyes of the public.”  

Tanner’s work favors the opposite desired outcome. Ever since she finished graduate school during the first Trump administration, when there were fewer outlets for climate science, she’s been working to reframe the conversation. Back then, the first thing she did was join a growing national network of educators and scientists known as NNOCCI (which she pronounces like the potato pasta) collaborating to produce the best possible kind of climate messaging.  

“The network’s road-tested metaphors are designed to be both memorable and to increase your understanding of a scientific topic, and then to spur a call to community action,” says Tanner. 

Years later, Tanner and a colleague named Megan Ennes, both of whom eventually did a stint as NNOCCI directors, resolved to take some of the past research on climate messaging to the next level. They’d begun hearing that some of the nation’s most trusted sources of climate information — informal educators in zoos, aquariums and nature-based museums — were struggling to explain climate extremes and the increasing unpredictability of the weather. 

“Educating about uncertainty is a struggle, nobody likes to think about it,” says Tanner, who has zeroed in on the topic in her own work. “So even though extremes and unpredictability make climate change more difficult to talk about, it’s a disservice not to.” 

Tanner and Ennes tested and retested a variety of metaphors for explaining extreme weather through a series of national surveys. Respondents were asked to select the most effective metaphors for six different extremes (flood, fire, heat, hurricanes, sea level rise, unpredictable weather). The researchers made some of the choices intentionally “bad or long-winded,” says Tanner, and they also offered choices more relatable to some demographics and age groups than others (floating terms like “hot flashes” for heat or “supersoakers,” a toy water blaster, for flooding). In the end, after several iterations, they settled on six new metaphors.

Words That Work

The following is an abbreviated summary of some of Tanner and Ennes’ findings, illustrated for KneeDeep by New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck. More details can be found in this policy brief.  Their work was funded by the North American Association of Environmental Educators. 

Flooding

Frame: Connect the changing climate to changes in rain distribution. 

Shared Value: We can protect the habitats and ecosystems we call home by addressing the issue of climate change today. Working together to reduce the risk of flooding, we safeguard the habitats we rely on and ensure future wellbeing for the entire community of life, including ourselves.

Climate Change Metaphor: As we burn coal, oil, and methane gas for energy production, excess carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. This extra carbon dioxide acts as a heat-trapping blanket that warms the atmosphere and ocean.

Extreme Events Metaphor: The ocean and atmosphere touch over 70% of the planet. This can cause excess heat from the atmosphere to be transferred into the ocean. As the oceans warm, extra water evaporates from the ocean to the clouds. This extra water in the sky increases rainfall over land. Sometimes soil can’t absorb this extra water fast enough. Soil is like a sponge: if it is too wet, it can’t absorb more water. This results in runoff that can cause flooding. 

Solutions: One way for communities to reduce flooding and urban heat is through the reduction of paved areas and an increase in green spaces. Another way is to support the construction of buildings with rainwater tanks, green walls, or green roofs. Beyond community boundaries, actions like wetland restoration can also help absorb flooding. 

Wildfires

Frame: Connect changes in climate to reduced rainfall in some areas leading to dryer, more fire-prone communities.

Shared Value: Working together, we can protect our communities and local habitats from wildfire risk by addressing the issue of climate change today. 

Climate Change Metaphor: As we burn coal, oil, and methane gas for energy production, excess carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. This extra carbon dioxide acts as a heat-trapping blanket.

Extreme Events Metaphor: When hot weather persists for a long time, the land and the plants that live there can dry out, becoming unlit matches waiting to be ignited. It only takes one spark to light an entire box of matches, just like it only takes one spark to ignite acres of dry shrubs. 

Solutions: Encourage your city to plant fire-resistant vegetation and engage in prescribed burns in public spaces. Encourage homeowners’ associations to include fire-resistant plants in your community’s list of approved plants. Not only are these species less likely to catch fire, but they are also drought-resistant and can reduce the need to water your lawn. 

Heat Waves

Frame: Connect the increase in extreme heat conditions to rising temperatures. 

Shared Value: As our climate continues to change, we have a responsibility to protect our communities and local ecosystems from its impacts, such as increased heat. 

Climate Change Metaphor: As we burn coal, oil, and methane gas for energy production, excess carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. This extra carbon dioxide acts as a heat-trapping blanket.

Extreme Events Metaphor: Warming is unevenly distributed around the world, with some places — particularly in urban areas — experiencing an increase in longer, more frequent heat waves. Heat waves can feel like a fever caused by climate change. Climate change can cause heat waves increasing the normal temperatures of an area just as a fever increases the normal body temperature.

Solutions: Communities can increase access to green spaces, reducing urban heat illness and providing habitat for native plants and animals. Green roofs on homes and buildings can reduce energy consumption as well as provide cooling properties. Communities can also increase their public transportation to reduce energy consumption year-round, allowing for more of our energy to be used for creating cooler indoor spaces during heat waves. 

A Few More Bright Ideas

The policy brief on this research is easy to read and covers all six extremes — not only flooding, fire, and heat as described above, but also sea level rise, hurricanes, and unpredictable weather events. For example: 

• Think of “sea level rise” as overflowing an already-full glass of water, and wetlands as the paper towels soaking up the spill.
• When hurricanes are amplified by heat and climate change, it’s like replacing your garden hose with a fire hose. The water comes out stronger, faster, and more unpredictably just like hurricanes amplified by climate change can be stronger, faster, and more unpredictable.  
• Unpredictable weather events due to climate change are as unpredictable as traffic conditions. When you don’t know what’s going on in front of you, it is hard to know when to slow or speed up. Since we cannot predict the change in weather patterns due to climate change, it can be difficult to prepare for unpredictable weather events.

The experts further suggest that any storytelling around extreme weather events and community solutions builds on the familiar: the places and communities where the audience lives, works, and plays. The messaging also envisions the audience as part of a collective. “Individualized solutions do not get people to act on a scale that is relevant to the scale of climate problems and solutions, or that lasts long enough,” says Tanner.

Tanner believes the national network has done a good job of reframing the climate change conversation. “I hear the metaphors and language they developed everywhere now,” she says, pointing out that NNOCCI crafted foundational climate messaging for national zoos, aquariums, and museums. “The fact that people don’t even know where they picked up a metaphor, it just stuck in their mind, shows how effective it is.”