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LONDON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have found that the summaries for the UN climate report scored poorly in terms of readability, which might affect people's understanding of the findings and significance of the climate research, according to an analysis published Monday on the website of Nature Climate Change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases an Assessment Report every five years, with an accompanying Summary for Policymakers condensing the key details for a wider audience.
A team of researchers conducted a linguistic analysis of the summaries of the five major IPCC reports in recent years. They applied readability metrics to the summaries and compared these to coverage of the reports by various newspapers and journals.
The results showed that the summaries had become less readable over time, with scores declining steadily since the first report in 1990.
In contrast, they found that the readability of scientific and news coverage of the reports had improved, although the tone of the media coverage was generally more pessimistic than the reports themselves.
The readability scores of the summaries were "not just low but exceptionally low," said Ralf Barkemeyer, who led the analysis. He works on sustainable business management at the KEDGE Business School in Bordeaux, France.
Barkemeyer also said that confusion created by the writing style of the summaries could hamper political progress on tackling greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC is currently considering a proposal to enlist science writers and graphics experts to improve the reports, according to an article on the Nature website.
Although Barkemeyer supports the idea, he also said that science communication training for lead authors of the report could be more promising and less controversial.
