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A high-profile weather presenter and forecaster has revealed that UK broadcasters are now having to be extremely selective when covering record-breaking weather events – since climate change is now causing them to happen with such increased frequency.
Speaking at an event with the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London earlier this month, Royal Meteorological Society fellow and presenter Laura Tobin said: “Maybe 10 years ago I’d say to [editors]: ‘Oh there’s been this record temperature, we should talk about this’. And they’d go: ‘Oh yeah, let’s put it in the news’”.
But from around five years ago, when the Good Morning Britain forecaster approaches editors with record climate events, they reply: “Oh, you’re coming with too many records, Laura. Maybe let’s just pick the really good ones”.
Tobin adds: “It’s come to a point where we can’t report all of them because, actually if you do them too often, they don’t have the same impact on people.
“We do have to choose the ‘good’ ones that have the best pictures or the highest fatalities, which is really sad…It must be climate change.”
When she started as a junior forecaster in the 2000s, initially for the BBC, Tobin says her boss told her to “never forecast a record” because they “stood for hundreds of years or longer for a reason.”
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But now each year appears to see previous records on temperatures and rainfall broken.
Tobin compares some of the extreme temperatures, for example the near-50 degree Celsius temperatures seen in parts of Canada last year, to record-breaking runner Usain Bolt doing 100m in seven seconds. “It’s just off the scale.”
Speaking to the Grantham Institute’s Dr Fredi Otto, she also discussed frustration with media coverage of the recent Hurricane Milton in the US and its impact.
Tobin takes issue with people saying “it wasn’t that bad” because there were “only” 16 fatalities. She points out that the low death toll was due to successful evacuation of 5.9 million people, and the conditions there were actually “unsurvivable”, with extreme damage caused by 15-foot storm surges, and major buildings being destroyed.
She also touched on how news coverage needs to treat extreme heat as seriously as other severe weather events.
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When parts of the UK exceeded 40°C temperatures for the first time in 2022, she had to advocate to her news team to treat it as a severe weather story, rather than a light “people at the beach” story. Tobin pointed to the risk to human life, and that of animals dying in the heat.
Dr Fredi Otto from the Grantham Institute said she had felt the impacts of climate change through her research. “I saw it with my eyes. I saw the retreat of glaciers. I saw the impact on the people, and the impact on the wildlife.”
Government figures show that during summer 2022, there were an estimated 2,985 (between 2,258 to 3,712) excess deaths linked to five days of extreme heat.
Tobin began her forecasting career working with the Royal Airforce, analysing weather patterns for pilots “flying all over the world.”
You can see the interview: Weird Weather: How is climate change impacting our weather? here.
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