Climate isn’t weather, but climate change leaves its fingerprints in regional weather patterns worldwide, and those fingerprints become more numerous with each passing year: One-hundred-year floods become annual events. A month’s worth of rain is unleashed in a single day. The sky turns apocalyptic orange from wildfires hundreds of miles away. A tropical storm rages into a category 5 hurricane in less than a day. An insurance company can no longer bear the increased climate risk and refuses homeowner insurance.
In a cultural landscape of social media and the rising “influencer” class, local news remains stalwart as the most trusted source of information in America, with the largest audience, according to a Knight Foundation and Gallup survey. Community-level climate reporting is critical for helping local audiences connect the dots between climate change in the abstract and the changing world outside their windows. Who better than the local weatherperson?
But talking about climate change isn’t easy or even necessarily a good idea. It’s a complex topic, and with all the misinformation, you need a firm grasp of the science. What’s more, just mentioning climate change risks contact with the electrified third rail charged with aimless rage seeking an outlet. That’s a lot to ask when meteorology—reporting the weather—is what you signed up for. It feels like it’s going to hurt.
But the weather is getting more extreme, and there is a need for an explanation.
Chris Gloninger tried.
When Hurricane Bob Came to Town
In 1991, when Chris Gloninger was in second grade, Hurricane Bob swept into his hometown of Sag Harbor, New York, leaving an enduring impression in its destructive wake. The storm took 18 lives, caused billions of dollars in damage, and was, at the time, among the worst in New England’s history.
The harrowing event seeded Gloninger’s fascination with meteorology. He was “amazed by the power of Mother Nature” and the devastation that extreme weather can bring to individuals and communities.
Fast-forward to 2023. Gloninger is the chief meteorologist reporting for KCCI in Des Moines, Iowa. Incorporating climate change into his reporting, he helped his audience contextualize local weather events into global climate trends. Not all viewers appreciated Gloninger’s effort, particularly a man from Lenox, Iowa. The increasingly vitriolic harassment led to a death threat.
After suffering PTSD from the constant harassment, Gloninger left his post at KCCI in June 2023. He is still involved in climate communication, working as a senior scientist for the Woods Hole Group.
Talk About Climate at Your Own Risk
Unfortunately, Chris Gloninger’s experience is neither unique nor rare. Local meteorologists are increasingly on the front lines of climate change reporting, leveraging their trusted status and broad reach to inform the public about the regional impacts of global climate phenomena. However, this role has significant challenges, including harassment and personal attacks.
Meteorologists like Gloninger face the dual challenge of engaging and informing their audience about climate change while enduring the invective of a handful of trolls. For local journalists, the trolling can feel more immediate. The veil of the internet is less comforting. They “know where you live.”
How do local meteorologists help their communities understand and talk about climate change? Where do they find the support to stay on point while navigating the ugly underbelly of fear and rage they often must endure?
Veteran journalist David Schechter knows the score. He’s lived it as a local reporter for 16 years at CBS affiliate WFAA in Dallas and currently as national environmental correspondent and host of “On the Dot with David Schechter” for CBS News.
For local meteorologists, “there is an intimidation factor,” Schechter told GlobalWarmingisReal in a recent interview. “I could see firsthand that (climate change) was not being covered locally and that people were afraid to do it… And so, coming to CBS, one of the things that we wanted to do from the beginning was to create something we called the E-Team,” he said.
Climate Reporting: The E-Team Supporting Your Local Weatherman
Schechter’s experience inspired him to co-found the “E-Team,” an initiative to help local reporters refine their climate reporting, promote resilience, and offer support in the face of the inevitable harassment from a loud sliver of malcontents.
The E-Team’s raison d’être is to “increase the climate confidence of reporters and meteorologists at the local news stations.” Building confidence entails learning a review of climate science fundamentals, dealing with harassment and trolling, and honing strategies for talking about climate change–even when it means not mentioning it.
The naysayers don’t reflect growing public concern, but how we talk about climate change is critical for reaching a receptive audience. “People want to know more,” said Schechter. “It’s bad to approach climate change with the audience as if it’s monolithic. Asking, ‘Do you believe in climate change?’ It’s a silly question. It’s just not a good conversation to have,” he says. “It’s just too broad and means too many different things to different people. It’s wise to narrow it down: What are we talking about here?
“The science is there. When you get past the phrase and (ask) ‘Would you support regulating carbon as a pollutant?’ People will engage in that,” he said.
Visualizing Climate
Weather happens in three dimensions, four if you count time. For years, weather has been presented in the same way: two-dimensional maps with someone standing in front of them. Employing augmented and virtual reality technology on the weather set allows viewers to visualize their local forecast much more efficiently. The E-Team works with local newsrooms to help their audiences visualize climate. Some examples include:
- Scott Warren from KPIX-TV in San Francisco worked with Schechter to implement a series of augmented and virtual reality views of microclimates as part of daily weather reporting.
- KPIX-TV and KYW-TV in Philadelphia recently rolled out their new weather sets, offering viewers immersive, 3D experiences while learning more about the weather affecting their neighborhoods.
- Similar AV/AR are planned in more CBS markets later this year.
Strength in Numbers
“There is strength in numbers,” says Schechter. The monthly E-Team training sessions allow meteorologists to compare notes, share their stories, and have discussions with climatologists, authors, and organizations like the Yale Program on Climate Communication and World Weather Attribution.
Although the project is still relatively new, the E-Team has worked hard over the past 18 months to bring value and support to local weather and news teams.
“We know that our journalists are strapped in their general assignment reporting, and they’re doing a whole bunch of other things,” Schechter says. “So when they come, we want to make sure that we are giving them something incredibly valuable, including a lot of story ideas and new ideas for them to hear from each other. And so we take the production end of (the training sessions) quite seriously.”
Reporting on climate change can feel like “pushing up from the bottom; you’ll have some victories. Celebrate those,” Schechter says. But when you’re pushing up, and the top is pulling you up, it’s incredible.”
For average citizens trying to understand how global warming impacts their lives and the local meteorologists reporting on those impacts, it’s always a relief to know you’re not alone.
