“France will burn”. Marc Hay, weather journalist at BFMTV, pushed, Tuesday, June 13, a rant noticed about the heat wave that hits France under the effect of global warming. “I think we have to change the way we talk about it, because it doesn’t print and you have to realize that what is happening is only the hidden face of the iceberg”he continued.
How to present the weather in a changing climate? What can be done to warn about the dangers of global warming? Franceinfo asked the question to several presenters and weather presenters.
“We are at a turning point”: Christine Pena, franceinfo
“Basically, he’s right. We’re not here just to present things. Faced with global warming, we are all concerned. The matter is too serious. As soon as I can make a link with the climate, I do it, even if we often lack time on the radio. We see each other regularly with my sisters and brothers during weather forums [le prochain est organisé le 21 juin à Paris] and this subject comes up every time: how to make the link with climate issues in our weather reports?
We are confronted with climatic events every day. Over the past 30 years, there have been three times more heat waves than in 150 years of weather observations. We see global warming, we keep repeating it – I’m thinking in particular of people who, like the climatologist Jean Jouzel, have been warning for years – and nothing is done. Everyone has to get involved, public authorities, large companies…
When I started, a very long time ago, we announced the good weather by rejoicing, the rain by regretting it. Today, with the drought, there are more and more listeners who send me messages to say “joy you that we have rain”, even if it remains a minority. We are truly at a turning point. We need to change our ways of presenting events, without being alarmist. The heat wave that we know, we will have more and more and yes it is dramatic. Farmers will lose the fruit of their labor, people who work outside, like those who lay paving stones near my home, will suffer. 40°C in Paris, we can’t be happy about it.”
“I don’t have the feeling of a general ‘I don’t care’: Sébastien Léas, Radio France
“I have a different cap, because I am also a forecasting engineer at Météo France, I do not come from the journalistic seraglio. We follow the guideline of the institution. There are expressions that we do not use, we We are not talking about good weather or bad weather. We are before the summer solstice, we are expecting 40°C in several regions. These values are very little observed, even as a general rule. In Paris, there is no only twice had a temperature above 40° C. The values should suffice.
I don’t necessarily have the same feelings as Marc. When people see the expected values, they are worried. In the media, since Sunday, we are on all the channels, there are reports everywhere. I don’t have the feeling of a general “I don’t care”. Today, we talk more about global warming and that’s very good. When we were talking about it 15-20 years ago, there was a little more skepticism, there is a lot less today.”
“We no longer know how to present things so that people react”: Géraldine de Mori, RMC
“I found his intervention very good. A few years ago, you would have told me about a heat wave in June, I would have answered you that it was science fiction. We see these extreme events which multiply , we may talk about it, try to alert, we have the impression that we talk about it a little at the time and that afterwards people don’t care. We no longer know how to present things so that people react. I receive a lot of messages, from people who say, ‘yes, it’s going to be hot, we’re not going to cry’. If, we have to cry, we just don’t know how to say it anymore.
I’ve been doing this job for over 15 years and I’ve really seen things change. We no longer talk about the weather at all as we used to talk about it fifteen years ago. The difficulty is to do so without being alarmist. If we are too much, people will fight. Me, I can’t find the words anymore, it’s totally crazy to have such temperatures on June 15th and it’s not normal to have heat waves every year. 15 years ago, the weather was superficial, funny and nice. Today, we realized that there was an issue and that the climate was changing. It’s become an important subject, it’s no longer something you put at the end of the newspaper, it’s become a lot more serious.
Today, I’m not going to talk about good weather anymore when there’s full sun when it’s been going on for days and there’s a terrible drought. When the rain will arrive, we will no longer speak of rainy degradation, but of rainy improvement. It’s no longer the bad news we should be talking about, it’s more like ‘phew, the rain is coming’. Vacationers may not be happy, but we have to think about the planet which is suffering a lot at the moment. We would really like people to be more aware of this. There are fewer and fewer climatosceptics, but the problem is that they are given a much more important place than they represent, that is to say very little. We continue to invite them in certain media, it’s quite terrible and on social networks, they are very present. I can’t make a tweet without being told that it was warmer in the Middle Ages and that we didn’t make a big fuss about it. They have a speech so absurd and without proof that it is difficult to dismantle their reasoning.
“Nobody finds that 40°C, it’s pleasant”: Karine Durand, CNews
“Of course, I share Marc Hay’s feelings, which are very fair. For several years now, the weather presenters of most news channels have been warning about the effects of global warming. This is highlighted by this exceptional heat wave, but it is not necessarily new. On the other hand, a few years ago, we could have criticized Marc for having been too alarmist or pessimistic – I am still criticized for this, including in recent days –but the fact that this is actually realistic talk and backed up by countless scientific studies is more accepted today.The reality of global warming and its man-made cause is not something people can be questioned.
We all receive messages that accuse us of exaggerating, but much less than in the past. It happens but it is much more marginal. The problem we encounter when we are a weather presenter on television is that we have very little time: one minute to give the info and add something more. The viewer can only remember two or three things. The challenge is to summarize, to say what is important. In situations of fine hot weather like what we experienced in the spring, with an anticyclonic blockage, we do not necessarily believe that this aggravates an already extreme drought situation in the south-east of the country. With a heat wave like this, it’s unbearable for everyone, nobody finds that 40°C is pleasant.
The summer season seems to have been getting longer for a few years and some people have already gotten used to it and tell us that it’s normal, that we’ve always known that. But no, 38 – 40°C in June is not normal.
I am a specialist in extreme events and in the United States where I studied, we take the weather very seriously. I was a bit “raised” in this design. In France, we still have this vision of “leisure weather”: “will the weather be nice for my picnic or for my football match?” But the role of the weather presenter is also an advisory and safety role, which goes beyond leisure. We will not escape this development. It’s no longer the announcer who announces with a smile that the weather is going to be fine, it’s an expert who can warn of a dangerous situation. The notion of danger will appear more and more, as will the question of health. Time has an impact on health, on the economy… It is at the heart of many issues.
I have been presenting since 2009: more and more, I take into account the problem of drought. Ten years ago, we would have spoken of rain as something negative. Today, we talk about it as something positive. Météo France has also used the term ‘rainy improvement’. In this case, the rain is saving. So we no longer say ‘unfortunately, we’re going to have to take out the umbrellas, things are getting worse’. We say: ‘this is good news’. Ten years ago, we were already experiencing the effects of global warming, but we did not necessarily know how to attribute certain phenomena. There, we have organizations that work on attribution, that do modeling with or without greenhouse gases. We now have more studies allowing us to attribute phenomena, more phenomena but also greater awareness. A few years ago, we pointed to presenters who talked about global warming. Today, it’s the opposite and we point to climate-skeptical discourse. It’s a sign that things are changing.”
“We must not trivialize these events, which are neither normal nor trivial”: Loïc Rousval, France 3 and CNews
“In view of the observed climate change, we must change our way of presenting weather alerts, be a little less smooth. When we have orange vigilance, that is to say a danger, more than 40°C forecast for a mid-June, it’s very early and intense, it’s worrying for vegetation, for farmers with the drought, for people’s health.In France, unlike other countries, people don’t take enough account orange and red vigilance and when there is a disaster, it’s too late.There are countries where people are much more receptive to weather warnings, they protect themselves more.
These phenomena are increasingly precocious, intense and regular. We observe a trivialization of people, who experience it as a fatality. The problem is that we must not trivialize these events, which are neither normal nor trivial. It is a real crisis, a disruption of the climate, in France and on a planetary level. How to approach them so as not to trivialize them? It’s not always easy: if you shout the alert, you can have the impression of doing a little too much, in the eyes of the public. On the continuous news channels, we do not always want to scare people, to add fear and panic in an already anxiety-provoking atmosphere with the Covid-19, the economic crisis and Ukraine. We want to bring a little escape and lightness.
The eventual solution is perhaps to use less conventional terms, to be a little less restrained, with a little more colloquial language: saying, it’s going to heat up, it’s going to fall rather than saying ‘we’re going to have temperatures above normal and strong accumulations. Off the air, we are carrying out a lot of actions against climate change. With Laurent Romejko, I launched the first game on the climate, the big quiz “Preserve the planet”.