Abstract
Recent years have witnessed devastating weather extremes, so it is no
surprise that people have started wondering, “what’s up with the
weather?” The potential role of climate change in making these extremes
worse has gained traction not only in the scientific community but in
public discourse a well. While scientists have made considerable
progress on statistical “climate attribution”—a way of assessing the
probability that climate change is influencing the character of some
extreme weather events—public understanding has not kept pace.
However, members of society do not need to know everything about climate
and its related changes to make decisions. Rather, building climate
literacy across society is paramount to better inform those decisions.
There are many facets of climate literacy and many ways to help society
become comfortable with the concepts. While riddled with challenges, one
way of explaining the statistical methods around climate attribution is
through carefully designed spinner boards. This is just one
demonstration of how to explain a difficult subject, and if properly
developed and used, this method holds the potential to significantly
improve climate literacy.