Media and Climate Change Observatory Special Issue 2019: A Review of Media Coverage of Climate Change and Global Warming in 2019

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/articles/qn59q4937

Abstract

2019 saw media attention to climate change and global warming ebb and flow, amid competing interests in other political, social, environmental, economic, and cultural issues around the globe. In the context of media attention paid to issues from Australian national elections to Yemeni conflict, climate change and global warming garnered coverage through stories manifesting through primary, yet often intersecting, political economic, scientific, cultural and ecological/meteorological themes. At the global level, October was the high water mark for coverage of climate change or global warming among the sources tracked by our Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) team. This trend of highest levels of coverage in October was also the case at the national level in Australia, Canada, Spain, the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018. This coverage was attributed primarily to attention paid to the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on impacts of 1.5oC warming. It was also bolstered by media coverage of continued impacts and reverberations from Hurricane Michael (coming on land in the US Florida panhandle) and Typhoon Yutu (tearing through the US Northern Marianas Islands) in October along with continued cleanup efforts from September’s Typhoon Mangkhut (damaging the Philippines) and Hurricane Florence (making landfall in the Carolinas).

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