This paper investigates television weather forecasters’ role in leading discussions about climate change. It focuses on Miami, a city that has become a symbol of climate change’s effects in local, national and international imaginations. Most studies of climate change communication focus on the transmission of information from one group to another, such as from scientists to the lay public, but they do not capture the ways that climate knowledge can become part of everyday community life. This paper uses the case of TV weather reporters, or weathercasters, in Miami to investigate their roles as both participants in and instigators of ‘community ritual’. I combine James Carey’s concepts of communication as transmission and ritual with Candis Callison’s description of climate change vernaculars to show that ritual and community-building are just as important in facilitating the acceptance of talking about climate change as the broadcasting of scientific concepts.
AndersonA. A.MyersT. A.MaibachE. W.CullenH.GandyJ.WitteJ.StenhouseN.LeiserowitzA. (2013).
If they like you, they learn from you: How a brief weathercaster-delivered climate education segment is moderated by viewer evaluations of the weathercaster. Weather, Climate, and Society,
5(4), 367–377. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-12-00051.1
BloodhartB.MaibachE.MyersT.ZhaoX. (2015).
Local climate experts: The influence of local TV weather information on climate change perceptions.PLoS One,
10(11), e0141526. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141526
5.
BoykoffM. T. (2011). Who speaks for the climate? Making sense of media reporting on climate change.
Cambridge University Press.
CohenD. A. (2017). The other low-carbon protagonists: Poor people's movements and climate politics in Sao Paulo. In GreenbergM.LewisP. (eds.), The city is the factory: New solidarities and spatial strategies in an urban age (pp. 140–157).
Cornell University Press.
11.
CookJ.NuccitelliD.GreenS. A.RichardsonM.WinklerB.PaintingR.WayR.JacobsP.SkuceA. (2013).
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters,
8(2), 024024. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
12.
DanielsG.LogginsG.M. (2007).
Conceptualizing continuous coverage: A strategic model for wall-to-wall local television weather broadcasts. Journal of Applied Communication Research,
35(1), 48–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880601065680
13.
FeyginaI.MyersT.PlackyB.SubletteS.SouzaT.Toohey-MoralesJ.MaibachE. (2020).
Localized climate reporting by TV weathercasters enhances public understanding of climate change as a local problem: Evidence for a randomized controlled experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
101(7), E1092–E1100. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0079.1
Hardy, R. D., Milligan, R. A., & Heynen, N. (2017).
Racial Coastal Formation: The Environmental Injustice of Colorblind Adaptation Planning for Sea-Level Rise. Geoforum,
87, 62–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.10.005
Howe, P. D., Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J. R., & Leiserowitz, A. (2015).
Geographic Variation in Opinions on Climate Change at State and Local Scales in the USA. Nature Climate Change,
5(6), 596–603. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2583
Koslov, L. (2019).
Avoiding Climate Change: “Agnostic Adaptation” and the Politics of Public Silence. Annals of the American Association of Geographers,
109(2), 568–580. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1549472
MaibachE.PlackyB. W.WitteJ.SeitterK.GardinerN.MyersT.SubletteS.CullenH. (2016). TV meteorologists as local climate change educators. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science.
Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.505
26.
MaibachE.MazzoneR.MyersT.SeitterK.HayhoeK.RyanB.WitteJ.GardinerN.HassolS.LazoJ.PlackyB.SubletteS.CullenH. (2017).
TV weathercasters’ views of climate change appear to be rapidly evolving. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 98, 2061--2064. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00206.1
MooneyC. (2007). Storm world: Hurricanes, politics, and the battle over global warming.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
30.
MoserS. C. (2010).
Communicating climate change: History, challenges, process and future directions.WIREs Climate Change,
1(1), pp. 31–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.11.
31.
MoserS. C. (2016).
Reflections on climate change communication research and practice in the second decade of the 21st century: What more is there to say?WIREs Climate Change,
7(3), pp. 345–369. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.403.
32.
Myers, T. A., Maibach, E. W., Placky, B. W., Henry, K. L., Slater, M. D., & Seitter, K. L. (2020).
Impact of the Climate Matters Program on Public Understanding of Climate Change. Weather, Climate, and Society,
12(4), 863–876. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-20-0026.1
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (1981). Radio and television dissemination issue study.
35.
NorcrossB. (2017). My Hurricane Andrew story: The story behind the preparation, the terror, the resilience, and the renowned TV coverage of the Great Hurricane of 1992.
Bryan Norcross Corporation.
OreskesN.ConwayE. M. (2010). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.
Bloomsbury Press.
38.
Placky, B. W., Maibach, E., Witte, J., Ward, B., Seitter, K., Gardiner, N., Herring, D., & Cullen, H. (2016).
Climate Matters: A Comprehensive Educational Resource Program for Broadcast Meteorologists. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
97(5), 709–712. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00235.1
Rowan, K., Kotcher, J., Walsh-Thomas, J., Baldwin, P. K., Trowbridge, J., Thaker, J. T., Witte, J. H., Klinger, B. A., Cohen, L., Tresch, C., & Maibach, E. W. (2018).
Best Practices of “Innovator” TV Meteorologists Who Act as Climate Change Educators. In O’Hair, D. (Ed.), Risk and Health Communication in an Evolving Media Environment (pp. 123–155). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168821–7
SeabrookJ. (2000, April 23). Selling the weather, The New Yorker, 53.
45.
SecordJ. (2004).
Knowledge in transit.ISIS: A Journal of the History of Science,
95, 654–672.
46.
Sherman-Morris, K. (2005).
Tornadoes, Television and Trust—a Closer Look at the Influence of the Local Weathercaster during Severe Weather. Environmental Hazards,
6(4), 201–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hazards.2006.10.002
Timm, K. M. F., Perkins, D., Myers, T., Placky, B. W., & Maibach, E. W. (2020). Reporting on climate change by broadcast meteorologists: A national assessment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 101(2), E129--E140. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0225.1
49.
TucherA. (2014). Happily sometimes after: Discovering stories from twelve generations of an American family.
University of Massachusetts Press.
WeberE. U. (1997). Perception and expectation of climate change: Precondition for economic and technological adaptation. In BazermanM. H.MessickD. M.TenbrunselA. E.Wade-BenzoniK. A. (Eds.), Environment, ethics, and behavior: The psychology of environmental valuation and degradation (pp. 314–341).
The New Lexington Press/Jossey-Bass Publishers.
52.
Wilson, K. M. (2002).
Forecasting the Future: How Television Weathercasters—Attitudes and Beliefs about Climate Change Affect Their Cognitive Knowledge on the Science. Science Communication, 24(2), 246--268. https://doi.org/10.1177/107554702237849
53.
WilsonK. (2009).
Opportunities and obstacles for television weathercasters to report on climate change. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
90, 1457–1465. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2947.1.
54.
Zhao, X., Maibach, E., Gandy, J., Witte, J., Cullen, H., Klinger, B. A., Rowan, K. E., Witte, J., Pyle, A. (2014).
Climate Change Education through TV Weathercasts: Results of a Field Experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
95(1), 117–130. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00144.1
