In the version of the Correspondence 'Validity of county-level estimates of climate change beliefs' originally published (Nature Clim. Change 5, 704; 2015), the correlation coefficient should have read +0.46 (p < 0.05), not +0.53 (p < 0.01). Further, the number of counties where estimates fall within CERA/CAFOR confidence intervals is 17, not 18. This changes the variance figures to 63 vs. 12 (not 15), which suggests that the estimates by Howe et al. exhibit about 78% (not 74%) less variance than the true population belief. These calculation errors were made as a consequence of a coding error. These errors have been corrected and new Supplementary Information files uploaded online 13 October 2015.