Abstract

The newly established Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub is embarking on a project of partnering with over 140 television weather presenters throughout Australia to communicate climate information. The project follows the success of the Center for Climate Change Communication in the United States (which has just become a partner of our Hub), which now has 350 such presenters presenting climate graphics relevant to regional audiences in the US, that are informed by climate scientists. In Australia, the Hub will be partnering with groups that can deliver well-designed, easy to process climate information, that can be presented alongside the weather report across Australia’s television networks. Studies in the US have found that weathercasters are seen as highly trusted, apolitical and have large audiences. In Australia, in 2016, more Australians still received their news and weather from commercial television than any other source. The approach used in this project of ’non-persuasive communication’, of short messages, that are repeated often, but are informative will be explained in the presentation, as will be the challenges and opportunities.