The 97th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society is taking place this week in Seattle and I will be presenting a poster titled “Art Can Help Broaden the Public Conversation on Climate Change.”

Building on my talk, The Art and Science of Climate Change, I was curious to know if climate-art was influencing people’s opinions. Therefore, moving from the qualitative to the quantitative, I conducted a national poll using Survey Monkey. Participants were asked comparison questions about the influence of traditional graphs vs. artistic interpretations of climate change. The graphs were sourced from the IPCC’s fifth assessment report and the artwork came from both photojournalists and conceptual artists.

When compared to a graph, the different styles of art received different reactions. On average, however, a significant number of the participants (34%) related more to the issues of climate change via art than through traditional charts and graphs. Overall, 64% of participants said art had changed the way they thought about a subject in the past.

These results show art to be a powerful tool of communication that helps to broaden the public conversation on climate change. They also highlight the fact that a variety of visual outreach methods are needed to reach the entire population on this critical issue that affects us all in one way or another.

Climate-Art Survey shows that art can help broaden the public conversation on climate change. Credit: The Weather Gamut.