Reporting extreme weather and climate change: a guide for journalists
This guide aims to help journalists to accurately report extreme weather events in the context of a warming planet: how can you best inform your audiences about the effects of climate change on the extreme events we are increasingly experiencing, without overstating (or, indeed, understating) the link? There are three common mistakes made by news organisations when covering extreme weather events: ignoring climate change as a cause of the event, attributing the event to climate change without providing any evidence for that claim, and attributing an extreme weather event to climate change as the sole cause.
The guide provides an easy-to-read checklist for each type of extreme weather event. This includes a very basic overview for each extreme weather type covered in this guide. Further information on each type is given in the guide, including the best current science, descriptions of how it works and important points to note to ensure accurate reporting.
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