The Evolving Roles of Spanish-Speaking Weathercasters in Communicating Climate Change to Hispanic and Latino Communities

Although the majority of Americans acknowledge that climate change is currently happening and caused by human action, many also perceive it as a distant issue. In the United States, broadcast meteorologists play an important role as trusted community experts. Recent research shows how English-speaking weathercasters use their unique position to effectively help viewers feel more connected to the global issue by linking it to local phenomena, such as recent extreme weather events. However, there has been little research examining how Spanish-speaking weathercasters in the United States present climate change information to their viewers.

In 2022, our team sent a national survey to all bilingual broadcasters in the United States. Participants represented a diversity of ages, genders, and weathercaster positions (chief meteorologist, morning meteorologist, etc.). They were asked questions related to their climate change coverage, some of which included the methods and content they used to present climate change to their viewers, their motivation for providing this type of coverage, and the amount of support they received from management around this work.

We aim to draw conclusions from the results of the survey and provide an overview of ongoing practices across bilingual media markets in communicating climate. Further, as research suggests that Hispanic and Latino Americans hold different values than non-Hispanic/Latino Americans, such as increased collectivism, we conclude by making recommendations to bilingual weathercasters about how they can improve their climate change communication so that it better resonates with their Hispanic/Latino viewers.