Climate tools without climate consensus: weather and climate decision support tools create openings for agricultural adaptation

Despite the investment in climate and weather decision support tools and services, their adoption is reported to be lower than expected. Even with advances in modeling and forecasting, these tools are underutilized in agricultural decision-making. Historically, it has been widely assumed that concern with rapidly occurring climate change was a precursor to climate adaptation within the agricultural sector. Emerging research, including this study, challenges the coupling between climate change belief and adaptive action. Drawing on survey data from more than 383 California farmers and ranchers and 121 agricultural advisors, we find no statistically significant relationship between our Climate Concern Index—a measure that integrates belief with related dimensions of evidence, attribution, motivation and interest in learning—and the use of climate decision support tools by farmers and ranchers. We also identify a sharp epistemological divide: while most producers reported having sufficient information to manage climate risks, advisors overwhelmingly believed that producers lacked it, reflecting differing standards for what counts as ‘enough’ knowledge. We argue that climate decision support tools act as boundary objects: common instruments that support coordination among users with varied perspectives, without needing agreement on the causes of climate change. In doing so, we posit that they may also shape mental models of climate variability and change over time, embedding long-term trends within familiar decision contexts. As boundary objects, climate decision support tools hold promise not only in bridging divides and reshaping how climate change is understood, but in creating common ground for action across diverse worldviews in a contested political climate.