The benefits of using TV-meteorologists as climate change communicators

The general public tends to trust TV-meteorologists, as they are familiar faces bringing them a non-political forecast on a daily basis. In addition, they are experts in their field but use a language that people understand.

Public demand for high-quality climate information is growing and at the same time, climate researchers and national meteorological institutes wish to reach new audiences. MET Norway, therefore, established a project in 2019 to develop our TV meteorologists as climate change communicators to address this dual challenge.

MET Norway supplies meteorologists to forecast the weather at NRK, the Norwegian national public broadcaster. The TV-meteorologist's benefit is that they use a language that people understand, and that they can talk about climate change from a local point of view and in relation to the weather situation at a given time. The main objective of this project was therefore to regularly include climate information in the weather forecasts on NRK radio and television. Graphic material developed for TV should also be used in social media, and be made available for climate researchers giving popular lectures.

The target at the onset of the project was to have at least five climate broadcasts through the project period of 2019-2020. The result was 40 stories in the weather forecasts on NRK television. Most of the stories were related to temperature changes, but also about Arctic sea-ice, flash-floods, and changes in snow cover. The TV-meteorologists involved in the project reported that they mainly got positive feedback from the audience. The majority of the stories have also been shared through social media and through press releases to reach other audiences than those that watch TV. Most of these stories have been shared (e.g. retweeted) by multiple users, and we estimate a reach of about 20 percent of Norway's population as realistic.

The project is inspired by similar projects in other countries, especially Climate Matters in America. In this presentation, we will share our experiences from the project at MET Norway.

In 2021 the project was operationalized in a climate editorial desk on MET, consisting of several climate researchers, TV-meteorologists and communication advisors that meets on a weekly basis. The TV-meteorologist summarizes the month on both TV and radio from a climate perspective. They still do climate stories monthly and participate in other climate stories on social media.