Climate Solutions and Climate Attribution in Extreme Heat Press Coverage: The July 2022 UK Heatwaves

Extreme weather events are short-term and have concrete impacts on local communities. This may make them easier to narrate for media outlets than the increases in global average temperatures. We use the historic July 2022 heatwave in the United Kingdom as a case study into how newsrooms cover extreme heat disasters and the extent to which they make an explicit connection to climate change. We examine reporting on climate solutions and climate attribution in English-language press coverage of the heatwave by UK national and local news outlets, compared to U.S. news. Climate-specialist news outlets were more likely to not only mention climate change, but also to discuss climate solutions and the linkages of heat extremes to climate change in heatwave coverage. Climate journalists, independent of newsroom-level effects, were more likely to make the climate connection in heatwave coverage. Other significant factors correlated with climate change issue attention in heatwave reporting were the discussion of impacts on people and record heat measurements. We address the normative implications of these findings for the journalism industry.