Local communities’ dependence on the environment for their livelihood has guided the development of indicators of local weather and climate variability. These indicators are encoded in different forms of oral knowledge. We explore whether people recognize and perceive as accurate one type of such forms of oral knowledge, climate-related proverbs. We conducted research in the Alta Alpujarra Occidental, Sierra Nevada, Spain. We collected locally recognized proverbs and classified them according to whether they referred to the climatic, the physical, or the biological system. We then conducted questionnaires (n = 97) to assess informant’s ability to recognize a selection of 30 locally relevant proverbs and their perception of the accuracy of the proverb. Climate-related proverbs are abundant and relatively well recognized even though informants consider that many proverbs are not accurate nowadays. Although proverbs’ perceived accuracy varied across informant’s age, level of schooling, and area of residence, overall proverb’s lack of reported accuracy goes in line with climate change trends documented by scientists working in the area. While our findings are limited to a handful of proverbs, they suggest that the identification of mismatches and discrepancies between people’s reports of proverb (lack of) accuracy and scientific assessments could be used to guide future research on climate change impacts.

中文翻译：

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使用谚语研究当地对气候变化的看法：内华达山脉（西班牙）的案例研究

当地社区对生计的依赖取决于环境，这指导了当地天气和气候多变性指标的发展。这些指标以不同形式的口头知识编码。我们探讨人们是否认识到并认为这类口头知识的正确类型是与气候相关的谚语。我们在西班牙内华达山脉的Alta Alpujarra Occidental进行了研究。我们收集了当地认可的谚语，并根据它们是否涉及气候，物理或生物系统对其进行了分类。然后我们进行了问卷调查（ñ = 97）来评估线人识别30种当地相关谚语的能力以及对谚语准确性的理解。与气候相关的谚语非常丰富并且相对公认，尽管线人认为当今许多谚语都不准确。尽管谚语的感知准确性随信息提供者的年龄，学历和居住地区的不同而不同，但总体而言，谚语缺乏报道的准确性与该地区科学家记录的气候变化趋势相符。尽管我们的发现仅限于少数谚语，但它们表明，人们对谚语（缺乏准确性）的报告与科学评估之间的不匹配和差异的识别可用于指导未来对气候变化影响的研究。