From immediate to future climate uncertainty: European meteorological agencies as sources of information on heat waves and climate change

Abstract

Meteorological agencies are playing an increasingly prominent role in climate change communication. This paper compares the work of the official meteorological agencies of Spain, France, Portugal, United Kingdom and Italy as direct communicators and as a source of information on the risk posed by heat waves (immediate climate uncertainty) and climate change (future climate uncertainty). In this way, we can analyze how the European press is nourished by the work of these agencies in warning us about some extreme phenomena and their future repercussions. For this purpose, a combined methodology has been carried out, where the websites and Twitter profiles of the five official meteorological agencies are analyzed and, in addition, their impact is studied in a sample of 221 news items on heat waves published during the month of June 2022 in the online edition of 19 European newspapers. The results obtained indicate that the country of origin is key in the quality of the information provided by meteorological agencies, with France and the United Kingdom leading the way. Among the specific factors, the participation of experts in the news is the most decisive and shows that the agencies of several countries could assume, by introducing these factors, a stronger role in the dissemination of the risks involved in climate change.