For a long time, chatting about the weather was the height of small talk.
Have there been awkward silences in a conversation? Stumped about what to say to a colleague? Commenting on the weather forecast was usually a safe bet.
But weather is no longer the neutral domain it once was.
Climate change is now part of America’s culture wars, with heat waves and specialties becoming fodder for partisan fighting.
Nowhere are the tensions more acute than in local TV weather departments, where it’s becoming increasingly hard for the nation’s roughly 2,000 TV forecasters to stay afloat as extreme weather events become more common and climate change pushes up global temperatures.
Consider the case of Chris Groninger.
Groninger, an award-winning TV meteorologist, moved to Iowa in 2021 to become chief meteorologist at CBS affiliate KCCI in Des Moines. His new bosses were clear: They wanted him to talk about climate change.
But many of Groninger’s conservative viewers felt differently, and when he began linking extreme weather events to human-caused global warming on his airwaves, he began receiving hate mail and even death threats.
As my colleague Carla Buckley noted in a recent article, Groninger began to feel unsafe and eventually returned to Massachusetts.
What happened to Groninger is an extreme example, but it shows how difficult it can be for meteorologists to talk about climate change.
Today’s hyper-partisan politics can take things to extremes,For more than a decade, the meteorological community has been grappling with the question of how to talk about global warming.
In 2010, the National Science Foundation and George Mason University launched a program called Climate Matters. The goal of this initiative was to bring data-driven climate news to local audiences, and there was a high demand for this content.
Climate Matters is now present in more than 245 cities and media markets, working with thousands of reporters and editors across the country.
Bernadette Woods Plucky, who presents the show, said that overall there has been an increase in coverage of global warming among TV weather forecasters.
“Climate change is fundamentally changing the weather, and that’s now part of the story,” she said.
And most viewers are receptive, she said, and TV weather forecasters help explain climate change in real time.
And yet, in these days of America, politics is as much a part of life as the weather.
Last month, Steve McLoughlin, a weather forecaster for NBC6 in Miami, broke the usual script.
A few days earlier, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had signed a bill into law that meant state governments would no longer have to consider climate change when setting energy policy.
McLaughlin denounced the law on his show and urged people to get out and vote.
“The world is looking to Florida to lead the way on climate change, but our government is telling us that climate change is no longer the priority it once was,” he said. “Remember, the most powerful climate change solution is one you already have in your hands: your right to vote.”
In response to a request for an interview, McLoughlin said his employer would not allow him to speak further about the matter.
Next up, Jeff Berardelli from WFLA in Tampa. Berardelli has long been one of the most outspoken meteorologists on climate issues, and has routinely argued that the increase in extreme weather is due to rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases.
Just yesterday, he spoke on his show about the record heat that has hit the planet over the past year, and made the point that most of the excess heat is caused by human activity.
“My job is to be honest and forthright about the science and tell people the facts,” Berardelli said. “I’m not going to hide the truth because it might upset some people.”
Berardelli is not alone. CNN’s Elisa Raffa also consistently includes climate-related reporting in her forecasts. John Morales of NBC6 in Miami has also been including global warming topics in his forecasts for years. ABC meteorologist Ginger Zee has pushed back against viewers who claim she has a political agenda.
And as extreme weather and record heatwaves become more commonplace, more meteorologists will have to find unique ways to address issues that are sometimes tricky for local viewers.
We’ll be looking at the weather and how climate change is affecting us, which will also be one of the topics we’ll discuss onstage with Al Roker at our Climate Forward event on September 25th.
Five things you need to know
Heat countermeasures are lagging behind in rural areasDionne Searcy reports that traditionally less hot parts of the US, like Maine, are considered to be among the most socially exposed to extreme heat in the country, but many of these areas lack the programs that larger cities have in place to keep people cool.
Wall Street’s silence on climate changeThe dire news about the costs of climate change is barely registering on Wall Street, reports Lydia DePilis. “Indeed, recent Wall Street news has mostly been about retreating from climate goals, rather than recommitting to them,” she writes. “Banks and asset managers are withdrawing from international climate alliances, frustrated by their rules, while regional banks are increasing lending to fossil fuel producers.”
How climate change is affecting the weatherBy Austin Gaffney The deadly heatwave that began across Central America last month and spread into Mexico and the southwestern US is 35 times more likely to occur because of human-induced climate change, according to a new report from World Weather Attribution.
The report is one of several released this year by the group, an international organization of climate scientists. Other reports released by the group this year include:
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Man-made global warming has doubled the likelihood of floods like the deadly rains that hit Brazil in April and May.
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According to reports from organizations such as the WWA, over the past year, the average person experienced 26 more days of extreme heat than normal.
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Climate change has increased the chances of a record heatwave in West Africa tenfold in February.
But researchers are less clear about the role of climate change in April’s Dubai floods or this year’s drought around the Panama Canal.
Yes, summer is getting hotter. Extremely hot summers that were almost unheard of a few decades ago are becoming increasingly common, report Naja Popovic and Adam Pearce. The graphs in the article, based on analysis by researchers at Columbia University, show a clear shift towards hotter summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over recent decades.
Problematic RecordsGlobal energy consumption grew 2 percent last year, “pushing fossil fuel use and emissions to record levels,” according to a new report by the industry group Energy Institute. But fossil fuel dependence in developed countries may have peaked, the report said. In Europe, fossil fuels have fallen below 70 percent of primary energy use for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.
