4. Summary and Discussion
As demonstrated in the paper and the diagram, I tried to compare two scales, the IPCC interest, and the scientific interest, and to examine seven climate-related phenomena using these scales. My assumption was that the interest of the IPCC would show a similar trend to the general scientific interest in climatic phenomena and perhaps point that the scientific interest in climatic phenomena is related to climate change. This is despite the fact that the IPCC interest described above is the different aspects of climate change and does not necessarily reflect the scientific interest. In my opinion, This is due to the growing interest in climate change in recent decades, and as a result, the scientific research also deals with this issue. The results in Graph 1 shows a common trend for both scales, IPCC Interest, and scientific interest. However, the results show a trend that is more exponential than linear. In other words, the results of the IPCC show a greater increase in the level of interest between one phenomenon to another than the scientific interest. This is compared to the drought taken as a reference value in both cases. Yet, the order of the phenomena regarding the level of interest in the two scales, except for the last two phenomena, is identical.
Although receiving the results I expected (i.e the obvious trend shown in the paper) this test also contains several limitations that may affect the results. First, in the search of the IPCC report, the different keywords were included in the entire report (i.e both the reference and the different words that contain the keyword). For example, when I searched for the number of times the term ENSO was mentioned in the report, the word "sensor" was also included in the examination. This problem is not valid for all phenomena and therefore I decided to take phenomena that do not create a large number of these duplicates. El Nino was not included in the results for this reason, but among the phenomena I examined, El Nino is the only one that was not finally included in the paper. The number of examined phenomena could also be a limitation on the reliability of the results and conclusions. This paper examined seven phenomena, including one social phenomenon. Of course, the examination of a greater number of phenomena will produce more reliable and accurate results. In addition, the examination of more social phenomena can shed light on the differences, if there are, between social and natural phenomena. The difficulty in including more social phenomena and their effect on the results was primarily due to the fact that these phenomena have different characteristics(saing somthing else before). In addition, I found it difficult to find a phenomenon that is local in size and does not include other phenomena within it.
Finally, if the results truly reflect the reality, then the paper can shed light on the understanding of scientific research topics between 2003 and 2013 and the importance and dominance of climate change in the scientific research. The similar trend of scientific and IPCC interest in the climatic phenomena can shed light on the scientific engagement to climate change, a phenomenon that has a wide impact on society, and the scientific interest Itself, which also includes many social aspects.
References