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Improving public understanding of climate change by supporting weathercasters

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 694–695 (2022)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Effectively communicating the risks of climate change is essential for advancing the adaptation and mitigation measures required for human and planetary health. Building and supporting trusted communicators can be an important means to reach that end.

Broadcast meteorologists are well suited given their training, access to the public, and status as local and trusted sources of scientific information. As a profession, meteorologists have been working to keep the public out of harmful weather events since the 1800s. Concerned by the substantial loss of life on land and at sea, a network of mostly volunteers leveraged the power of the telegraph to collect weather observations and communicate the first storm warnings. Since that time, the broader weather–climate community has worked to build predictive tools on timescales ranging from minutes — for a tornado warning, to millennia — for the long-term impacts of climate change. Today, in the United States, the weather forecast is consistently one of the most watched segments on local TV news, and more Americans get their news from local TV than from newspapers, national network TV or cable TV.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation (DLR-1713450, DLR-1422431, DUE-1043235, DRL-0917566). Additional support was received by the Schmidt Family Foundation, Robertson Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, ClimateWorks and Town Creek Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Edward Maibach

  2. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Monterey, CA, USA

    Heidi Cullen

  3. Climate Central, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Bernadette Placky

  4. Aquent/JPL/NASA, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Joe Witte

  5. Columbia, SC, USA

    Jim Gandy

Authors
  1. Edward Maibach
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  2. Heidi Cullen
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  3. Bernadette Placky
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  4. Joe Witte
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  5. Jim Gandy
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the development and operation of Climate Matters at various times over the past decade. E.M. and H.C. led the writing of the manuscript, drawing from the expertise and previous contributions of all authors. All authors reviewed, revised and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Edward Maibach.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Jim Gandy used to work for WLTX and is now retired.

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Maibach, E., Cullen, H., Placky, B. et al. Improving public understanding of climate change by supporting weathercasters. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 694–695 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01433-2

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