Drawing from a multiyear series of interviews with sea level rise assessors during the development of IPCC’s Working Group I volume of the Sixth Assessment Report—the first time access had been granted to researchers to observe the IPCC process—this article analyzes the social and epistemic challenges and tools (both technical and social) involved in assessing complex, uncertain science questions. This study shows that “the curve”, a representation of future sea level rise, is an example of the human dimensions of the science/policy interaction in three ways. First, IPCC authors’ experiences demonstrate that it is not just the communicative outcomes or political feedback from assessment reports that matter, but also the social and expert processes that produce these assessments. Attempting new assessment techniques to improve understandings of climate science can also improve broader society’s understanding of climate science, impacts and solutions. Second, the human side of global environmental assessments influences the credibility of these organizations. Expert authors accept these volunteer jobs for multiple reasons but their perception of the social experience of assessment influences their buy-in, and ultimately, the legitimacy of the organization. Third, the IPCC is increasingly formalizing its procedures for figure design and generally supports author experimentation with figures. However, less is known about how the social dynamics of chapter teams influences figure design and other assessment elements: we demonstrate this through our ethnographic analysis of the creation of curve figure and text box. The IPCC is a living, breathing organization: assessment work is not formulaic. To understand the science decisions in the report, we must understand how these decisions were made.

中文翻译：

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曲线：在不确定性下预测海平面上升的民族志


本文借鉴了在 IPCC 第六次评估报告第一工作组卷的制定过程中对海平面上升评估员的多年系列访谈——这是研究人员首次获准观察 IPCC 过程——分析了评估复杂、 不确定的科学问题。这项研究表明，“曲线”是未来海平面上升的代表，从三个方面体现了科学/政策互动的人类维度。首先，IPCC 作者的经验表明，重要的不仅仅是评估报告的沟通结果或政治反馈，还有产生这些评估的社会和专家过程。尝试新的评估技术来提高对气候科学的理解也可以提高更广泛的社会对气候科学、影响和解决方案的理解。其次，全球环境评估的人性方面会影响这些组织的可信度。专家作者出于多种原因接受这些志愿者工作，但他们对评估的社会经验的看法会影响他们的认同，并最终影响组织的合法性。第三，IPCC 正在日益规范其图表设计程序，并且通常支持作者对图表进行实验。然而，关于分会团队的社会动态如何影响图表设计和其他评估元素，人们知之甚少：我们通过对曲线图形和文本框创建的民族志分析来证明这一点。IPCC 是一个有生命力的组织：评估工作不是公式化的。 要理解报告中的科学决策，我们必须了解这些决策是如何做出的。