A Systems Map of the Challenges of Climate Communication

Figures & data

Table 1. Systems mapping convention

Symbol	Description	What it Represents
The Processes of Climate Change Portion of the Systems Map
	Entry/Starting Point	The start of the map and the climate change process
	Merge	Two or more factors/processes merge together and become one at this junction
	Preparation	A preparatory step that sets up another step in the climate change process
	Delay	A time lag between the factors/processes
	Climate Change Process	A process/step that occurs in the climate change process
	Exit/End Point	The end of the map
	Causal Arrow	A causal relationship/pathway in the climate change process
	Bidirectional Arrow	An influential relationship between two factors/processes
The Challenges of Climate Change Communication Portion of the Systems Map
	Display	Depicts climate change communication challenge/issue for a given process/factor/relationship in the climate change portion of the map
	Decision/Behavior	The decision made/behavior exhibited by an individual that is affected by or is a result of the communication challenge
	Climate Communication Process	A process/step that occurs in the climate communication process
	Climate Communication Causal Arrow	A causal relationship/pathway that shows where the climate communication challenge originates from and points to the associated display, decision/behavior, or climate communication process/step

Figure 1. Systems map of the unique challenges to communicating climate-related information.

Table 2. Climate communication challenges and their potential effects on human behavior and decision-making

Communication Challenge	Description	Example
Limited information on how individual actions contribute to collective human activity	Individuals often do not realize how their specific actions may contribute to the collective human activity that leads to climate change and thus, may not take steps to change their actions.	People may not realize that their individual action of driving to work adds to overall carbon emissions and that taking public transportation or carpooling are more environmentally-friendly options to lessen their impact.
Limited information on how what happens in one geographic area affects other areas	People in one geographic area may not realize how what happens in another geographic area may affect them.	Those in Brazil may not pay attention to carbon emissions in India, even though carbon emissions in both areas contribute to global climate change.
Limited information on how present activity leads to long-term effects	The time lag of climate change can make it difficult for an individual or organization to see the impacts of their actions. This can lead to a lack of awareness of how present activity leads to longer-term environmental effects.	Individuals may not realize that purchasing an electric vehicle leads to less carbon emissions over time, compared to gas or diesel vehicles.
Difficult to represent and communicate complex relationships	Due to the complex, non-linear impact that human activity has on the climate, it is difficult to communicate these relationships clearly. This can result in people not fully understanding the contributing factors to climate change and thereby potentially misidentifying causes.	Describing the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures is not straightforward due to the complex processes involved. As a result, people may view rising temperatures as normal seasonal variations as opposed to the effect of excess atmospheric greenhouse gases trapping solar energy and warming earth’s temperatures.
Unclear information on thresholds for when climate change becomes a problem	Even when people understand a general relationship between human activity and a change in the climate, they may not realize the threshold at which that activity becomes a problem. As a result, it may not be clear when it is crucial to curtail or eliminate such activity.	While it may be understood that carbon emissions result in rising temperatures, people may not realize the point in time, or point at which a level of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere have been reached, where activities that produce carbon emissions, like airplane travel, are no longer viable. As a result, it may not be clear when it becomes critical to stop traveling by airplane.
Lack of specifics on what to do about climate change	Individuals may not be clear on what specific activities they can do to mitigate the effects of climate change because of the complex processes involved.	People may not be aware that eating less meat, especially beef and lamb (Our World in Data, (n.d.), and reducing dairy product consumption can reduce carbon emissions from transportation, preservation, and prolonged refrigeration (Fujimori et al., 2018).
Temperature and precipitation will fluctuate from day to day making it difficult to report the overall trend	Daily temperatures and precipitation vary from day-to-day and season-to-season. Individuals tend to focus on the day-to-day weather and may not notice larger sustained trends as a result of climate change.	Because temperatures tend to vary such that during the winter one day can be cold, the next might be warmer, and the following is cold again, one may not notice a rise in average winter temperature by 3.8 degrees (Raffa, 2023).
Difficult to show the impacts of temperature and precipitation changes on things outside of the individual’s experience	Without realizing more than the temporary effects of temperature (e.g., warmer weather) or precipitation changes (e.g., sunnier days) on daily activities and not the broader, longer-term effects, individuals may actually view such changes as favorable.	People may not realize that the same warmer weather that allows them to wear lighter clothes and spend time outdoors may also lead to decreased crop yields and limited availability of drinking water over time.
Climate-related information loses credibility	Media often attributes extreme weather events to climate change in advance of scientific experts (e.g., climatologists) confirming it. If it is determined that the event was due to some other natural occurrence and not climate change, individuals may question the attribution of climate change to different weather events and come to distrust climate science.	Media may jump to attribute climate change as the cause of a recent hurricane, but two weeks later, climatologists determine that it was not due to climate change, which leads to confusion and distrust among the public about attributing climate change to future events.
Information lacks easily understood language to capture the severity of weather events, portrays extreme weather events as normal, and the frequency of extreme weather event trends are difficult to communicate	Climate-related information tends to lack lay-friendly language that fully conveys the severity of extreme weather events, and the trends in their frequency of occurring. Additionally, the way extreme weather events are communicated may make these events seem more normal or typical than they are, thus, not adequately raising an alarm.	A forecast might show that it will be a “more active hurricane season” but obscures additional details about what this means in terms of severity or how this relates to previous years, or overall trends.
Information lacks clear language to explain the relationship between climate change and vector habitat changes	Climate information tends to lack clear language to connect climate change to the changes in locations of vector (e.g., mosquito, tick) habitats. As a result, individuals may think of climate change as having an impact on the weather they experience, but do not realize how this change in weather may lead to disease-carrying vector populations finding new habitat in their area.	Individuals may not realize that warmer weather and more rainfall led to disease carrying mosquitos moving in and finding habitat in these newly warmer and rainier areas. As such, individuals in those areas may focus on the elimination of mosquitoes without considering the cause of their movement stemming from climate change.
Weak surveillance systems for tracking vectors	Oftentimes the only way to know the arrival of disease-carrying vectors is through surveillance of new infections. Few current efforts proactively check the environment for the presence and extent of disease-carrying species (Wilson et al., 2020). This can lead to people being unaware of where vectors are moving and how they may be impacted by climate change.	The arrival of ticks to new areas that were previously uninhabitable for them may go unnoticed by those who live there due to a lack of surveillance systems to track their movement. As such, an increase in Lyme disease cases may be the only way to realize the change in tick habitat location to new areas, after the ticks have spread disease to human populations.
Changes in locations of food sources, its origins, and the associated supply chain is not clearly described as caused by climate change	Reports of changes in food sources tend to not include climate change as the root cause for the shift. As a result, individuals may ascribe other reasons for the changes. Additionally, most individuals in industrialized nations have little knowledge of where their food comes from. Thus, individuals may not realize changes in their food sources.	A blackberry distributor may notify consumers that their source location changed from Mexico to China but not include the reason for the change, such as climate change. As a result, individuals may ascribe other reasons for the change in location, such as the new location being cheaper or having better seasonality.
Information focuses on repairing the damage/effect, rather than the cause	When changes in temperature and/or precipitation and extreme weather events cause infrastructure and property damage, the outcome reports tend to focus on ways to repair the damages rather than noting climate change as the cause. Thus, individuals may focus on solely dealing with the resulting damages rather than the cause of the event itself. This difference tends to reinforce seeing extreme events as singular events rather than part of a growing trend.	Reports may focus on the costs of repair from a hurricane and federal assistance programs but neglect to note the role that climate change played with the hurricane.
Lack of information on how damage trends across an area	Reports of infrastructure damage tend to only report specific instances of damage, and not how damage trends across a geographic area.	Individuals may not realize how widespread property damage is beyond their immediate neighborhood, which obscures a full view of the magnitude of climate-induced damage.
Information focuses on finding someone to blame	When climate-related events cause infrastructure damage, media outlets tend to sensationalize the government’s action or inaction to address the damages. This leads to information that focuses on who or which entities are to blame rather than identifying climate change as the root cause of the problem.	After a severe flood leads to major property damage, the media may focus on reporting the lack of initiative from the government to repair the damages rather than noting the ways that climate change contributed to the damage.
Information focuses on treating the condition, not on its causes and Limited information on how each factor exacerbates health conditions	There are multiple factors that contribute to the development of chronic and mental health conditions, but there is limited information around the relationship between each factor and the resulting condition. Additionally, most information focuses on treating conditions rather than describing what may have caused them.	High air pollution exacerbates respiratory conditions, but the focus tends to be on treating the bodily effects (e.g., asthma inhalers) rather than mitigating or explaining the environmental impacts (e.g., burning fossil fuels) that contribute to these conditions.
Information focuses on resolving outbreaks and returning to pre-outbreak situation (i.e., new normal)	When an infectious disease outbreak occurs, the immediate focus tends to be on resolving the outbreak, in order to return to pre-outbreak conditions. This can result in individuals not realizing that the outbreak was potentially caused by climate change.	In the immediate aftermath of a disease outbreak, the focus of attention is typically on a “return to normal,” and may include activities like focusing resources on developing a vaccine. This may lead to a lack of awareness of the causes of the outbreak’s emergence, including the contribution of climate change.
Lack of reporting of epidemics/outbreaks and Poor surveillance of epidemics/outbreaks	In general, there tends to be a lack of surveillance and reporting of infectious disease outbreaks until new infections emerge in populations. Further, when outbreaks become less severe (i.e., cases emerge less frequently) it may not be seen as a priority to continue surveillance efforts.	As mosquitos that carry Dengue virus are able to survive farther north, people may be unaware that Dengue outbreaks are occurring around them, resulting in a lack of protective measures for vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women.
Incomplete reported information on food consumption patterns and Information does not report changes in food availability	There lacks sufficient data on global food consumption patterns and food availability. Additionally, current data may be missing important details that climate researchers would need in order to track food changes on different geographic and demographic scales that might result from climate change.	Fluctuations in the availability of climate-resilient crops would have an impact on people’s health, however, it may not be apparent to researchers that this was happening until a more complete picture of their consumption patterns exists in retrospective data.
Limited information on how each non-linear relationship produces society-wide effects	Societal effects result from multiple factors across different sectors and scales, and people tend to assign greater weight to causes that are more immediate rather than climate change. As a result, individuals may not realize that climate change may be a contributing factor to the health effects they experience.	People tend to focus on more direct links to obesity, like poor diet choices, rather than causes that are less obvious or direct, like a lack of access to quality outdoor greenspaces for exercise in one’s neighborhood.
Economic evaluations are based on current year assessments	Economic evaluations that stretch over many years can be difficult for laypeople to interpret because they account for inflation and methodically reduce future costs. As a result, individuals may underestimate the true magnitude of future costs considerably. If it were more obvious how much climate change may cost in the future, people might be more willing to invest in solutions before a crisis occurs.	The current guidance that calls for a 3% or 7% discount rate on the social cost of carbon doesn’t adequately reflect the longer time periods of climate change (Prest et al., 2021). This may lead to an underestimation of the true costs of climate change and benefits of climate mitigation over time.

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