Wanyun Shao, Ph.D
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Our new paper in Science of the Total Environment

7/19/2020

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    Our new paper has been published in Science of the Total Environment (Impact Factor: 6.551). Below please find the abstract:

     "Climate extremes will be intensified and become more frequent. One of the regions where this is the case is the U.S. Gulf coast region. This region is susceptible to the impacts of climate extremes. This region has recently experienced large amounts of economic damages caused by high-impact hurricanes and floods. Meanwhile, drought can also pose serious risks once it occurs. By using a 2019 U.S. Gulf Coast survey combined with Standard Precipitation Index, we closely examined retrospective and prospective evaluations of drought and flood among coastal residents. Drawing upon literature on human-environment system, we were interested in how the objective conditions of past drought and flood influenced individual’s perceptions of these hazards and how their retrospective evaluations were correlated with their prospective evaluations of future trends of these hazards. Coastal residents’ retrospective evaluations of past drought and flood were found to be influenced by historic objective conditions. Higher drought frequencies were found to increase the probability of perceiving increasing trend of drought number in the past. Higher flood frequencies were found to decrease the probability of perceiving increasing trend of flood number in the past. Higher intensities of drought and flood were found to increase the probabilities of perceiving increasing trends of drought duration and flood amount in the past. Coastal residents’ prospective evaluations of future drought and flood were found to be influenced by retrospective evaluations of these hazards, suggesting the temporal continuity in human judgement. Moreover, those who relied on a longer time span in reference to the future were found to be more likely to perceive increasing trends of drought and flood. We ended this paper by proposing a theoretical framework to guide future studies and discussing policy implications."​
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Core Figure - Figure 4. Retrospective evaluations of drought and flood risk and association with objective conditions (a) and their correlations with prospective evaluations of drought and flood risk (b). In (a), filled circles, circles with cross, empty circles depict the frequency, duration, intensity, respectively, of drought (red) and flood (blue). In (b) filled (empty) circles depict retrospective evaluations on past drought and flood numbers (past drought duration and past flood amount). The bars represent confidence intervals of all the estimated coefficients (Shao and Kam, 2020)
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Graphic Abstract
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Figure 2. Number of states under regional drought events (red) and regional pluvial flood events (blue) (Shao and Kam, 2020)
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Figure 3: Monthly time series of the relative search activity indices on drought (a) and flood (b) between 2004 through 2018. Dark (light) lines depict the averages (maximum and minimum values) of the relative search activity indices over the five Gulf costal states (Shao and Kam, 2020)
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Our new paper has been published in Climatic Change

10/27/2019

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    Our new paper, entitled "Approval of Political Leaders can Slant Evaluation of Political Issues: Evidence from Public Concern for Climate Change in the U.S." has been published in Climatic Change. You can find the abstract below:

      "Climate change has become one of the signature issues that divides the American public. Numerous empirical studies of the past two decades have identified the politicization of this issue. In recent years, the concurrence of rising extreme weather events and uptick in public concern for climate change has led to common speculation that the former may drive up the latter. Using a nationally representative survey dataset combined with climate extremes data including extreme heat, extreme precipitation, and mild drought or worse, we use Structural Equation Modeling to examine how politics and climate extremes altogether shape American public concern for climate change. In addition to confirming politicization of climate change, we find that approval of President Trump not only promotes skeptical climate change perceptions but also serve as an intervening amplifier of these perceptions for Republicans and conservatives. Thus, one’s concern for climate change is partially explained by their political identification and partially explained by their levels of approval of Trump. With the 2020 presidential election underway, it remains to be seen how attitudes toward presidential candidates can affect climate change perceptions and support for climate policies. The widely speculated role of climate extremes however fails to show significant effects in views towards climate change. We provide explanations for this insignificant finding. The study ends by calling for more studies to further investigate into the drivers of formation of opinions towards climate change."

​The following figure is from the accepted manuscript (Shao and Hao 2020 a)


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Figure 1. Structural Equation Modeling Diagram (Shao and Hao 2020 a)
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I am featured in this NYT article

3/1/2019

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    I am featured in the NYT article by Brad Plumer. In this article, he explored how the weather gets weaponized in climate change messaging.
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My lightening talk in 2019 Journey in Science series at UA

2/14/2019

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     The 2019 Journey in Science series at Rodgers Library for Science & Engineering at the University of Alabama:
      I will give a lightening talk summarizing my past and recent research on the topic of American public opinion towards climate change. In this talk, I will discuss the various forces including both natural and socio-political ones that influence American opinion towards this critical issue.

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My analysis article in the Washington Post

12/7/2018

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        I just published one analysis article on extreme weather and American public opinion towards climate change on the Monkey Cage in Washington Post . Here is one paragraph:
        "Here is what is going on: The baseline probabilities of Democrats’ and  Republicans’ perceptions of climate change and extreme weather are different. To illustrate, imagine that the probability that someone in Party A believes in human-made climate change may be 80 percent, while that probability for  someone in Party B may be only 30 percent. What my research finds is that extreme weather events can change that baseline probability upward, regardless of partisanship or ideology. That change may be more dramatic for those in Party A than Party B. Nevertheless, the change does occur; extreme weather can move the needle."
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The Fourth National Climate Assessment sends an urgent message

11/23/2018

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    The recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment sends an urgent message to communities across the nation. Extreme weather events will intensify and become more frequent. The increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events will pose serious threats to communities, especially low-income and other marginalized communities. Although many local communities have displayed growing interest in elevating their resilience to the ever changing climatic conditions, much less interest has been shown in mitigating carbon emission as we have seen in the failures to pass carbon tax in even liberal states. Understandably, climate change being the ultimate tragedy of the commons, the benefit of reducing carbon emission is trivial compared to that of taking actions to adapt to climate change at the local level. However, this level of urgency and impact does demand regional and national cooperative framework.  
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big wild fires and climate change

11/18/2018

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     It is disheartening to see the horrific devastation created by wild fires in California. The human society, despite being armed with advanced technology, can feel extremely humbled when confronting the mother nature. Climate change, despite being questioned and denied by some, has certainly played a role in worsening the dry and hot condition in the west, which contributes to an upward trend of big wild fires. 
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My analysis article: A year after Hurricane Harvey

8/23/2018

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    A year after Hurricane Harvey, the decisions to rebuild can affect the future. I just published an analysis article on the Conversation. Here is the last paragraph:

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My recent research shows that even with their flaws, FEMA flood maps influence decisions to purchase flood insurance and overall support for flood mitigation. Policy makers need to seriously consider how to accurately communicate increasing flood risks to the public. Reverting to old flood maps and granting variances to promote development is a recipe for more disasters down the road."

       Hat tip to Emily Powell at the National Wildlife Federation, who brought this situation to my attention.

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Climate in everything: low rainfall and assassinations of Roman Emperors

7/21/2018

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         A new paper published on Economics Letters claims that low rainfall can predict assassinations of Roman Emperors from 27 BC to 476 AD. The logic line is: low rainfall -> low food supplies -> more troop mutinies -> assassination of Roman Emperors.  Being creative enough, one can find no shortage of interesting topics to study.
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Climate in everything: heat and cognitive skill development

6/29/2018

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     A new NBER working paper shows aggregate-level evidence that indicates cumulative exposure to heat can have detrimental impacts on learning. The authors suggest school air conditioning can help mitigate the adverse effects. Evidently, more studies need to be conducted in developing countries where air conditioning is not universally available. 
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    湖边的风


    Wanyun Shao, Ph.D

    I am a geographer who studies the relationship between human society and the environment at various geographic levels. I apply both quantitative (i.e., statistics and geospatial models) and qualitative (i.e., in-person interviews and policy analysis) methods in my research.

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