Climate Central launches Realtime Climate alerts to help journalists localize climate change stories

PRESS RELEASE

Climate Central launches Realtime Climate alerts to help journalists localize climate change stories

Princeton, NJ—June 18, 2021—Climate Central today announced the launch of Realtime Climate alerts, a reporting resource to help journalists present climate science and visualize climate connections to local weather events as they happen. 

Free registration for Realtime Climate email alerts, with production-ready graphics customized for 240+ media markets, is available at: https://www.climatecentral.org/realtime-climate/

“We developed Realtime Climate to narrow the gap between growing concern about climate change and audiences’ perceptions that climate science coverage is still somewhat rare,” Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central said. “Reporters and meteorologists in our beta tests told us it was easy. Realtime Climate let them integrate localized climate data visualizations into broadcast, print, and digital stories about weather-related events.”

* Survey-based research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows that 63% report being worried about global warming, but only 25% recall hearing about it in the media at least weekly.

Realtime Climate alerts are issued when local weather conditions can be linked to climate change. Alerts include production-ready graphics for television and digital news coverage, links to supporting data and analyses, local impacts, and independent experts willing to comment on record. Conditions that trigger alerts include local forecasts of extreme heat or unusual temperature departures, extreme precipitation, coastal flooding, and high wind or solar power generation potential based on local installed capacity. A video overview with an on-air example is available at: https://www.climatecentral.org/realtime-climate-about/

About Climate Central and Realtime Climate

Climate Central is a non-advocacy, non-profit science and news organization providing authoritative information to help the public and policymakers make sound decisions about climate and energy. Climate Central developed Realtime Climate to issue alerts for media and climate professionals when local conditions relate to climate change, its impacts, or its solutions. More information at: https://www.climatecentral.org/realtime-climate/

Media contact: Peter Girard, Director of Communications, Climate Central: pgirard@climatecentral.org or 609-986-1999

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