Understanding scientists’ communication challenges at the intersection of climate and agriculture

agribusinesses, policymakers, and the general public than with producers. “Uncertainty” and “social-ecological systems” was statistically significantly more likely to be used with policy- makers than producers. It was statistically significantly more likely to use “global warming” with agribusinesses than with producers and the general public, respectively. Challenges We asked respondents to describe climate change communication challenges through an open-ended question in this survey. A total of 22 codes emerged from the challenges associated with communicating with stakeholders (Table 2; S6 Table includes representative quotes for each code or theme). The codes ranged from terminology choice (using layperson language), economic implications, making climate change personal to the stakeholders, accessibility Fig 2. Scientists’ likelihood of using terminology sorted by overall decreasing likelihood ranking. Notes. Survey question: “How likely are you to use the following terms/phrases when talking to [stakeholder] about climate change?”. scale: 1 = extremely unlikely, 2 = unlikely, 3 = neither likely nor unlikely, 4 = likely, 5 = extremely likely Arrows indicate likelihood of use relative to the other stakeholder group. See S5 Table for mean and median by stakeholder group, and detailed statistical model results. The rows with arrows indicate the statistically significant relationship (p-value < 0.05) from pairwise comparison determined by Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test adjusted by Bonferroni correction method. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269927.g002 PLOS ONE

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