EMS Annual Meeting Abstracts

Vol. 21, EMS2024-500, 2024

EMS Annual Meeting 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Communicating Climate Change Adaptation to Color-Blind

Audience: Are We Paying Attention?
Dragan Milošević1 and Pilar Orero2
1
Wageningen University & Research, Environmental Sciences Group, Meteorology and Air Quality Section & Hydrology and
Environmental Hydraulics Section, Wageningen, Netherlands (dragan.milosevic@wur.nl)
2
TransMedia Catalonia Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain (Pilar.Orero@uab.cat)

Thousands of research articles on climate change adaptation are published each year. Most of
them contain figures and images that share scientific findings with interested audiences. These
findings are important information for human adaptation to climate change and no one should be
left behind. However, how many of these studies are paying attention to the color-blind audiences
(about 300 million people worldwide) when designing and sharing scientific information through
figures and images?

In order to answer this important question, we performed an analysis of highly cited studies from
the Web of Science database on the topic of climate change adaptation in the last 30 years.
Screening of papers was done by two independent reviewers and special focus was placed on the
types of figures and images included in the studies and their representation elements such as
color palettes and color contrast. The findings from this research can be useful for better
communicating climate change adaptation to color-blind audiences as this is an important issue to
address in order to ensure accessibility, avoid misinterpretation, enhance engagement, and fulfill
our ethical responsibility to inclusivity in addressing climate change. Finally, we hope that this type
of research will raise awareness among researchers and motivate them to pay attention when
communicating climate change adaptation strategies and solutions to color-blind audience
worldwide.

Acknowledgement: This research is supported by the project ClearClimate - “Engaging

approaches and services for meaningful climate actions”. This project has received funding
from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No 101131220.

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