Inside the Forecast Factory: The Communication of UK Met Office's 3-Month Outlook

Abstract

Seasonal climate forecasts (SCF) provide information about future climate variability from a month up to a year ahead. These forecasts could help organisations mitigate seasonal climatic risks, such as the impact of temperature on the consumption of energy or of severe winter weather upon road, rail and aviation infrastructure. Yet empirical research into the uptake of seasonal climate forecasts suggests that they are not always understood, trusted or used in decision-making. Geographers, other social scientists and climate scientists have tried to improve the communication of SCF either by identifying presentation formats that are easier to understand or by customising the message of a forecast to a stakeholder’s decision-making needs. However, both efforts to improve the communication of seasonal climate forecasts focus on how stakeholders interpret and use SCF, rather than on following the people, texts and data that constitute the message of a SCF. This thesis therefore argues that the message of a SCF is not a product that is delivered to an end-user but a web of relations between things (materials) and meanings (semiotics). Drawing upon work within science and technology studies (STS) and geography, I develop an ethnography that follows the relations that form the 3-month outlook, which is based on SCF issued by the UK Met Office. I argue that the 3-month outlook is simultaneously a bounded region in time (3-month averages) and space (for the whole of the UK), a stable network of documents and graphs and a fluid mixture of conversations and emails. The successful communication of 3-month outlook depended on UK Met Office staff holding these elements together so that the message remained the same when it was communicated in different circumstances. I conclude by suggesting that climate scientists need to find ways of adapting the content or style of the message they communicate, so that their messaging remains continuous across stakeholders who have different understandings of what a ‘normal’ climate is and ought to be like.