A systematic review of studies comparing environmental change perceptions and instrument-derived meteorological data

Abstract

Numerous studies have compared public perceptions of climate and environmental change with instrument-derived meteorological records, yet methodological inconsistencies have limited clarity on the degree of alignment between the two. This systematic review synthesizes 204 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2025 to assess (i) how studies define and use perception recall periods, (ii) the temporal coverage and type of instrumental climate data used and (iii) the methods used to compare perceived and observed trends. Most studies focused on rainfall and temperature and were concentrated in Africa and Asia. We find that triangulation-based comparisons overwhelmingly dominate literature, with only a small subset employing statistical tests capable of assessing the strength or significance of alignment. Across studies, temporal mismatches between perception recall periods and climate data were common, and more than 100 studies did not report recall periods at all. Despite these limitations, many studies reported alignment between perceptions and instrumental records. Overall, our review recommends clearer reporting standards and broader adoption of statistical approaches that explicitly align respondents’ perception recall periods and duration lived in the study region with instrumental data to produce more robust and comparable assessments of perception–climate relationships.

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