Around 72 per cent of articles on June heatwaves from the UK’s nine main national daily media publications failed to mention global heating or the climate
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Most UK media stories on the sweltering heatwave in June – when temperatures reached 37.7°C – did not mention global heating or the climate, analysis has found.
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The analysis examined the print and digital media articles in UK national media publications from Monday 22 June to Sunday 28 June, tracking how many articles included the phrase ‘heatwave’ or ‘extreme heat’ – also referred to as ‘climate change’ or a similar term such as ‘climate’ or ‘global warming’. Researchers also tracked how many of those articles referred to the phrase ‘net zero’.
In total, nine publications were tracked: the Express, the Financial Times, the Guardian, The Independent, The Mail, The Mirror, the Sun, The Telegraph and The Times. The Financial Times scored the highest, linking 50 out of 78 of its heatwave-related stories to the climate crisis. Next up was The Guardian, with 64 out of 131 articles.
Around 39 per cent of The Independent‘s heatwave stories mentioned the climate, while around 20 per cent of the Mail‘s referred to global heating. One in eight of the approximately 400 stories in the Express linked heatwaves with climate change.
Only nine per cent of The Mirror‘s heatwave articles mentioned the climate. The Sun ranked bottom, with just six per cent of the articles researched linking to the climate crisis.
‘The link between all three recent periods of extreme heat and climate change is indisputable,’ said head of international at the ECIU think tank Gareth Redmond-King.
‘If recent heatwaves are the symptom, then climate change is the illness, and net zero is the medicine. When public understanding of this link is so low, it’s vital that the dots are joined between these three concepts to help make us all better.’
This development comes after the recent news that more than 2,700 people are thought to have died from heat-related causes during both the May and June heatwaves in England and Wales. Of those, around 42 per cent died as a result of extra heat caused by human-induced warming.
Around 550 are estimated to have died due to heat-related causes during the May heatwave, and about 2,200 during the June heatwave. Approximately 59 per cent of the deaths in May, and 38 per cent in June, can be attributed to the additional heat added by human-caused climate change.
Daytime maximum temperatures across England and Wales are now roughly 3–4°C hotter than they would have been without human-induced climate change.
