the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 09 Oct 2025
The Gap Between Attitudes and Action Within the Geoscience Community's Response to Natural Hazards
Abstract. With the impacts of climate-related hazards, such as extreme heat, heavy precipitation, drought, flooding, wildfires, tropical storms, and severe weather becoming more intense and frequent, exposure to these hazards continues to increase as population growth expands into areas prone to higher hazard risk such as coasts, wetlands, and wildlands. Despite these trends, adaptation efforts remain a patchwork of local initiatives implemented primarily at the individual and household level and are not enough to keep pace with increasing hazard impacts. Most climate communication strategies have targeted non-expert audiences to raise awareness and increase adaptive behaviours. However, studies exploring how climate scientists are engaging professionally and personally with climate change impacts are rare. A key aspect of this study is that it specifically focuses on geoscientists, a cohort of experts who study and understand the causes, impacts, and risks of natural hazards. Their professional work provides a distinct perspective on the tangible consequences of climate change. This study is part of a larger research project which examined discipline-level engagement (i.e., funding, research, publications) and professional engagement (i.e., teaching, learning, work) across the geosciences. We review these larger trends in discipline-level and professional engagement with natural hazards and extend this line of inquiry with this study to assess the integration of expert hazards knowledge into geoscientists' personal decision-making processes. The results of this study indicated a knowledge-action gap related to hazard engagement that appears to be systemic across the geoscience discipline. This study provides a baseline for future research into evaluation of climate expert behaviours and actions as it relates to climate hazards. It also provides a new communication simulation that can be tested internationally and compared to this study's results. In addition, the simulation can be incorporated into in-person settings to facilitate discussion about climate hazard risk considerations.
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Status: open (until 04 Dec 2025)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3430', Hazel Napier, 07 Nov 2025
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Leila Gonzales, 14 Nov 2025
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Note: Referee’s comments are in plain font, followed by authors’ replies in bold.
Thank you for your comments and helpful feedback on how to improve the manuscript.
Suggestions:
it is not clear in the abstract where in the world this study is focused. Later it is made clear it is US focused. This would be useful to include further up the manuscript.
We will update the abstract to specify that the study is US-focused.
Suggest that it is made clear in the abstract that the job-choice simulation was used and forms the bulk of the paper. This would provide useful clarity when reading early sections of the paper (introduction etc.).
Good point. We will update the abstract to clarify that the job-choice simulation forms the bulk of the paper.
It would be useful to understand the size of the surveys conducted between 2023-2025. Who was surveyed (how many academics/researchers etc) and how many institutions. Perhaps also show results of the survey at p7 in a table.
We will provide more information about the size and representation of the different surveys conducted over this period.
The reasoning for using the online job-choice simulation is sound however it is unclear where participants were drawn from. How wide was the cohort and how representative of the academic/non-academic population as a whole?
We will clarify our methodology for recruiting participants to the job-choice simulation and discuss the representation of the cohort to the academic / non-academic population as a whole.
P19-20, lines 420 and 421 - sentence unclear - 'Thus in reflection, the importance of income may have become less important than income'
Thank you for catching that. The sentence should have read 'Thus in reflection, the importance of income may have become less important than other factors, such as location, community amenities, and favourable weather’. We will update the text accordingly.
Suggest some of the results from the job-choice simulations are presented in tables. The text is dense and hard to read at times. Some form of summary of the results would be useful (there is some summary information in the form of charts (figures 6 and 7), but tables may help the reader understand the key messages).
We will look to see where we can provide additional summary information in the form of tables, especially in the more dense parts of the text, and will update the text accordingly.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3430-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Leila Gonzales, 14 Nov 2025
reply
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3430', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Nov 2025
reply
The paper provides an empirical analysis of how geoscientists engage with, or fail to engage with, natural hazard risk both professionally and personally. The simulation that tests how hazard perception influences job choice is innovative and provides valuable methodological insight. The analysis exposes an enduring knowledge–action gap across the discipline, yet the framing of this gap remains primarily behavioural and technocratic. The discussion can be deepened by engaging directly with the political and epistemic dimensions of inaction, as well as with the institutional structures that make the gap systemic rather than individual.
The paper describes adaptation efforts as “a patchwork of local initiatives.” This observation is valuable, but it would be more compelling if illustrated with a few clear examples. Cases of localised flood control or wildfire response could demonstrate how fragmented initiatives obscure the institutional or political nature of the problem. Work by Andrea Nightingale and Ritodhi Chakraborty (below) suggests that such patchworks often arise not from a lack of knowledge or funding but from excessive faith in technical and managerial fixes that depoliticise adaptation and obscure unequal power relations. Relating the geoscience community’s response to this broader critique would shift the analysis away from behavioural explanations of the knowledge–action gap and towards its structural and political causes.
The discussion of institutional vulnerability in the background section could also be extended. Geoscience departments have been politically and financially weakened in many countries, including the United Kingdom. They are particularly exposed at a time when climate change demands their expertise. Attention to the political economy of underfunding would help explain the discipline’s uneven capacity to act. The decline of state support for science, the rise of market-oriented funding and the prioritisation of short-term, applied research all shape how geoscientists engage with hazards. Linking these trends to broader debates about neoliberal governance of science would strengthen the argument and situate the findings in a global academic context.
The section on integration could be developed further. The authors refer to integrating expert hazard knowledge into decision-making, but it is unclear what kinds of inclusion are involved and whether this process creates friction. Integration is rarely neutral: it often reinforces disciplinary hierarchies and epistemic inequalities. Scholarship on plural knowledge systems has shown that integration can sometimes undermine rather than promote justice, particularly when other perspectives are incorporated instrumentally rather than collaboratively. Clarifying how geoscientists integrate knowledge, whether through genuine co-production or through technical synthesis, would enhance the discussion of justice and inclusion within the discipline.
Overall, the paper makes a valuable contribution by documenting the systemic character of disengagement in geoscience. The findings reveal the limits of awareness and the persistence of cognitive dissonance within the community. However, the argument could reach further by engaging with the political ecology of expertise. The knowledge–action gap should be seen not only as an individual failure to act, but also as a structural outcome of how knowledge, institutions, and funding regimes are organised. Drawing on critiques of technocratic adaptation and on work about plural and situated knowledges (reading suggested) would show that the gap is not simply cognitive but political and epistemic. This would position geoscience not only as a discipline under strain but also as a site with the potential to transform how hazards and risks are understood and addressed.
Suggested Readings
Andrea J. Nightingale (2017). Power and Politics in Climate Change Adaptation Efforts: Struggles over Authority and Recognition in the Context of Political Instability. Geoforum, 84, 11–20.
Ritodhi Chakraborty, Mabel D. Gergan, Pasang Y. Sherpa & Costanza Rampini (2021). A Plural Climate Studies Framework for the Himalayas. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 49, 22–29.
Siri H. Eriksen, Andrea J. Nightingale & Hallie Eakin (2015). Reframing Adaptation: The Political Nature of Climate Change Adaptation. Global Environmental Change, 35, 523–533.
Philip Mirowski (2011) Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science, Harvard University Press.
Daniel Sarewitz (2016) Saving Science, The New Atlantis, 49, 4–40.
Sheila Jasanoff (2004) States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and the Social Order, Routledge.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3430-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Leila Gonzales, 14 Nov 2025
reply
Thank you for the feedback and suggestions to expand upon this paper’s research. It is outside our scope of this research project to delve into the political and epistemological aspects of the knowledge-action gap. However, we recognize that there are many opportunities for additional research and inquiry for which this paper sets the groundwork.
In response to some of the more specific comments:
- The comment about the “patchwork of local initiatives” referred to text in the Abstract where we did not wish to include references to specific examples. We provide in the Introduction section citations for further reading regarding examples of localized initiatives for adaptation.
- Institutional vulnerability. Thank you for the comments on the situation of geoscience departments in the United Kingdom. Our study is US-based and so we focus our paper and discussion on the situation of geoscientists engagement with hazards in the US. Further research into the evaluation of this knowledge-action gap would be useful, especially in other countries, such as the United Kingdom as is noted in the comment.
- Integration of knowledge into personal decision-making. The paper specifically refers to integration of knowledge as it pertains to the results of the job-choice simulation in which geoscientists and non-geoscientists showed similar patterns of interaction with the simulation.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3430-AC2
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Leila Gonzales, 14 Nov 2025
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An interesting topic covered by this paper. Rationale, methodology and results thorough.
Positives:
The rationale for the study is clear - it is new and novel and builds on existing wider research. The reasons given for focusing on natural hazards rather than climate change are clearly explained. The paper provides good recognition of the role geosicence plays in understanding the causes, impacts and risks of natural hazards hence supports the chosen methdology.
The background clearly sets out the wider study which this paper builds on. it is interesting to read that the reaseach shows geoscience academic departments 'leverage events as teachable moments and opporutnities for research and the chance to lead (us) to a more resiltient future'.
Use of the job-choice simulation is an interesting and novel way of assessing personal decision making as it relates to hazard impacts. Using job selection as the primary focus was a useful way of assessing underlying patterns in hazard/risk considerations.
There is good acknowledgement of why rankings differed as shown in figures 6 and 7.
The suggestions given at section 4.5 suggest useful follow-on activities including running simulations in group settings enabling discussion results and longitudinal study enabling measurement of the impact of the interventions.
Agree with the authors that it would be valuable to conduct this study outside the US to provide comparisons across different countries.
Suggestions:
it is not clear in the abstract where in the world this study is focused. Later it is made clear it is US focused. This would be useful to uinclude further up the manuscript.
Suggest that it is made clear in the abstract that the job-choice simluation was used and forms the bulk of the paper. This would provide useful clarity when reading early sections of the paper (introductino etc.).
It would be useful to understand the size of the surveys conducted between 2023-2025. Who was surveyed (how many academics/researchers etc) and how many institutions. Perhaps also show results of the survey at p7 in a table.
The reasoning for using the online job-choice simluation is sound however it is unclear where participants were drawn from. How wide was the cohort and how representative of the academic/non-academic population as a whole?
P19-20, lines 420 and 421 - sentence unclear - 'Thus in reflection, the importance of income may have become less important than income'
Suggest some of the results from the job-choice simulations are presented in tables. The text is dense and hard to read at times. Some form of summary of the results would be useful (there is some summary information in the form of charts (figures 6 and 7), but tables may help the reader understand the key messages).