Public more confident connecting increasing heat, wildfires with climate change than other extreme weather events, study finds
June 13, 2024
CORVALLIS, Ore. — Oregon State University researchers found that U.S. adults are fairly confident in linking wildfires and heat to climate change, but less confident when it comes to other extreme weather events like hurricanes, flooding or tornadoes.

The recent study found that politics and personal experience played significant roles in people’s responses: Self-identified Republicans were less likely than Democrats to attribute extreme weather events to climate change, though Republicans who had personally experienced negative impacts from extreme weather events were more likely to link them to climate change than those who hadn’t.

Looking at extreme weather events across the board, 83% of survey respondents said there is some link between these events and anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change. About 17% thought climate change had nothing to do with extreme weather.

“There is a growing field of scientific extreme event attribution to climate change, but we know less about what the public thinks,” said Hilary Boudet, co-author on the study and an associate professor in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts. “This work helps us to better understand public perceptions of event attribution to climate change. What the public thinks is important because these perceptions shape individual behavior and policy support.”

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