The dearth of Black researchers in the geosciences, which includes climatology, not only creates an exclusionary environment that isolates Black people within the field, but leads to inferior outcomes, Bloomberg reports. The self-perpetuating cycle of racial and socioeconomic exclusivity means those at the top of climate science academia have limited interactions with Black and other people of color.

This not only “concentrates a culture, it concentrates a view, and it amplifies a segregated community of climate scientists,” Vernon Morris, a founding director of NOAA’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology and a founding director of the atmospheric sciences program at Howard University, told Bloomberg.

This segregation limits the perspective of individual scientists and of the field as a whole, and is part of why critical research has largely failed to address concerns of the larger population, and thus leaves millions of people — like those unable to evacuate ahead of a hurricane — out of policy considerations based on that science. “It’s that level of subtlety that we don’t want to call racism, but it’s the same,” Morris said. “It’s the same substance that decisions are made on that exclude people of color.” (Bloomberg $)