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“Overall,” Bunn reported, “our temperatures are moving upwards”.
“Personally, I don’t like to yell at people,” Ms Bunn says.
“Anything that is forcefully put across, I don’t like to put any political spin on anything either. I just want the facts, quietly put through in a straightforward way that people can understand.”
Bunn, who this month was named as the 2019 Moomba queen, has been working with Climate Communicators, a program being run by Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub, who supply the presenters with graphics and info they can use if they wish.
It’s based on research showing people are most receptive to information that avoids advocacy, is factual, easy to understand, and comes from a trusted source.
The program is the counterpart of an American movement that has signed up more than 500 weather presenters across the US.
Bunn and the ABC’s Paul Higgins are the first weather presenters to sign up for the pilot Australian program.
So far, Bunn has focussed mostly on trends such as the increasing numbers of hot days and warm nights.
Viewers are generally fascinated with weather trends anyway and this is just giving them more of what they want, she says.
“A lot of the info can be all about doom and gloom.
Weather presenters Jane Bunn and Paul Higgins have been using charts supplied by Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub. Credit:Fairfax Media
"For me, it’s nice to be able to include it in something we are talking about anyway – show what is happening in a straightforward way that people can react to without having to think about it too much.”
The Monash program is delighted to have Bunn and Higgins using its data.
“Climate change has become such a hyper-political issue. Weather presenters are trusted, they are apolitical and skilled at communicating,” says Stephanie Hall, the team’s communications manager.
“If you can say this is what has happened in your city, and what is likely to happen ... that is when the penny drops, that’s when it becomes meaningful to their lives.”
“Personally, I don’t like to yell at people,” Bunn says.Credit:Chris Hopkins
Has there been any backlash to Bunn discreet climate change advocacy?
“Literally, nothing has come through to me,” she says.
“It’s a couple of graphs which go up on the screen which are telling what is happening. And there shouldn’t be any backlash about that, if you think about it. We’re just telling exactly what is happening.”
Liam is The Age and Sydney Morning Herald's science reporter
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