Climate Matters
Helping Weathercasters Tell Climate Stories
Our first Climate Change in the American Mind survey revealed that TV weathercasters are highly trusted sources of information about global warming. They also have unparalleled access to the public, and superior science communication skills. These three factors strongly suggested that TV weathercasters could become an important source of climate change education in communities across America.
We co-designed, built, and launched the Climate Matters program with Climate Central to activate TV weathercasters across the nation as trusted, local climate communicators.
Beginning with a single weathercaster, our Climate Matters partnership now provides localized broadcast-quality materials to more than 1,100 weathercasters nationwide, and is growing rapidly.
Climate Matters’ localized reporting materials are distributed weekly in English and Spanish in more than 94% of U.S. media markets. During the past decade, weathercasters’ on-air reporting of climate stories has increased more than 100-fold, and public understanding of climate change as a locally relevant problem has grown considerably.
Our Climate Matters Work
A 2016 National Study of Broadcast Meteorologists
Download report here This report provides initial findings from the fourth nationally representative survey of broadcast meteorologists conducted by George Mason University and partner organizations (American Meteorological Society, Climate Central, NASA, NOAA,...
Climate Matters: A Comprehensive Educational Resource Program for Broadcast Meteorologists
Global climate change is influencing the weather in every region of the United States, often in harmful ways, and these impacts are projected to become more severe over the coming decades. Increases in extreme weather events, and changes in local climate, can have...
A 2015 National Survey of Broadcast Meteorologists about Climate Change
A 2015 National Survey of Broadcast Meteorologists about Climate Change - Below are results from a national survey of TV weathercasters we conducted in partnership with the American Meteorological Society, Climate Central, NASA, NOAA, and Yale...
Weathercaster Views on Informal Climate Education: Similarities and Differences According to Climate Change Attitudes
Surveys have found that weathercaster views on climate change are diverse, with a large majority agreeing that climate change is happening but most remaining unconvinced that human activities are the principal cause. We hypothesized that these differences in climate...
Climate Change Education through TV Weathercasts: Results of a Field Experiment
A field study shows that on-air and online education provided by a TV meteorologist over the course of one year improved viewers’ understanding of climate change. Download the Article Here.
If They Like You They Learn From You: How a Brief Weathercaster-Delivered Climate Education Segment is Moderated by Viewer Evaluations of the Weathercaster
Local television (TV) weathercasters are a potentially promising source of climate education, in that weather is the primary reason viewers watch local TV news, large segments of the public trust TV weathercasters as a source of information about global warming, and...
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