ABSTRACT
This chapter explores effects that meteorological expertise differences may have on the ways that meteorological charts are interpreted and perceived. It reviews set of research studies that investigated the way experts and novices interacted with weather map information across a varied set of processing tasks. The chapter focuses on how the external visual information presented in weather maps is represented in the minds of viewers with different levels of expertise in meteorology. Incomplete or inappropriate perception of the information in a visual display can therefore derail interpretation processes. Meteorological charts, commonly known as“weather maps” are a form of visual display that is used both as a specialized professional tool for practicing meteorologists and as a resource for teaching students of meteorology. In the case of visual displays, it seems reasonable to suppose that the less information a display explicitly depicts, greater would be the reliance on the existing knowledge that a viewer brings to the processes of perception and interpretation.
