Climate coverage reached its highest level of 2026 during two June heatwaves, but the rise was short-lived. Climate News Tracker’s latest quarterly analysis finds extreme weather remained the only story that consistently broke through, while other climate stories with clear news pegs received little attention.

by Sam Cardwell (Content Analyst), Rosie Frost (Journalism Insights Analyst), Alina Sandauer (Content Analyst),  Dr Lissa O’Reilly (Content Analyst) &  Odyssée Ferrillo (Content Analyst) 

Television and radio climate coverage from UK public service media hit a 2026 high in June, new analysis by Climate News Tracker finds, driven by two heatwaves that also lifted NHS coverage. The findings suggest extreme weather remains the only climate story that consistently breaks through to the broadcast agenda.

Despite this, on average coverage continued to trail public concern throughout the quarter. Several other climate stories with an obvious news peg, including a summit, a major report, and a warning to one of the world’s biggest sporting events, went largely unreported.

Climate News Tracker tracks keyword mentions across 27 TV and radio programmes from the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV and Sky, comparing coverage of seven topics against ONS public concern data.

Climate coverage closes the gap, but only slightly

Climate and environment coverage rose across April, May and June, rising from 25.7% of programmes to 32.6%, then 38.1%. This is the highest monthly coverage level recorded so far in 2026, and a clear break from Q1, when coverage bounced between 22.8% and 29.1% each month with no clear upward or downward trend.

Public concern held steady at 53–54% across Q2, much as it did in Q1, when it sat at 51–53%.

As coverage rose in Q2, the gap between coverage and public concern levels narrowed from 28.3 percentage points in April to 14.9 percentage points in June, the smallest gap of either quarter tracked so far this year. It was well below Q1’s gap, which ranged from 23.2 to 29.2 points and never dropped below 23.

June’s climate gap of 14.9 points, while still a shortfall, is an improvement on anything seen in Q1. Even with this narrowing, climate remains one of the most under-covered topics out of the seven tracked relative to public concern.

Set against the same quarter in previous years, 2026’s rise looks less exceptional. June 2024 saw climate coverage reach roughly 48% of programmes, well above this year’s 38.1%, while June 2025 sat much lower, around 31%. Q2 2026 improves on last year, but did not reach the levels of climate coverage seen in 2024. As fewer programmes were tracked in 2024 and 2025, some of the year-to-year difference may reflect sample size rather than a genuine change in coverage.

Conflict, crime, cost of living, NHS, immigration and economy

International conflict coverage stayed elevated throughout Q2, remaining the most over-covered topic of the quarter. Following Q1’s near saturation peak of 99.4% in March, it held above 85% of programmes even as public concern fell to 50% in June.

Crime was the most stable topic across both quarters, holding between 88% and 94% of programmes throughout, always at least 29 points above public concern.

Cost of living had the sharpest reversal of any topic. Having climbed to 77.4% in March as Iran war-linked energy price pressures built, coverage fell to 46% by June, its lowest point in either quarter, even as concern held at 88–90% throughout. That left cost of living with the widest coverage gap of any topic in any month tracked, 42 percentage points in June.

NHS coverage fell for four months straight, bottoming out at 55.3% in April, while public concern remained high and steady at 80–82% throughout. It then rebounded sharply in May and June as the two heatwaves put hospitals and health warnings back on the agenda.

Immigration followed the same shape as NHS, falling to a low of 35% in April before recovering to 52.1% in June. It had the closest alignment with public concern of any topic in either quarter.

Economy stayed the topic whose coverage tracked closest to public concern all year, never more than a few points out of line. Coverage rose to a high of 84.9% in March, likely reflecting a mix of Iran war spillover and the March budget, then eased back through Q2 to 73.8% by June, moving in step with concern, which held between 69% and 74% across both quarters.

Why did NHS and climate coverage spike together?

The rise in NHS and climate change coverage can be traced back to two UK heatwaves, one in May and one in June. The keyword data and the daily data both show how these events impacted coverage.

In Q1, climate coverage ticked up in March largely through energy-related terms, “net zero” and “carbon”, while direct mentions of “climate change” actually fell. That pattern suggested the March rise was spillover from Iran war energy security coverage.

Q2 shows the opposite pattern. Mentions of “climate change” itself rose steadily across the quarter, from 14% of programmes in April to 21% in May and 24% in June. “Extreme weather” mentions rose even more sharply, from 1% in April to 4% in May and 14% in June, tracking almost exactly with the timing of the two heatwaves. “Net zero” also rose, from 8% to 14%, while “carbon” and “renewable energy” stayed broadly flat across the quarter.

The daily data also shows this pattern. For most of May and the first three weeks of June, the climate and NHS lines move independently of each other, drifting up and down with no shared pattern. That changes sharply inside each heatwave window as both lines climb together, peak within a day or two of each other, and fall back together once the heatwave ends.

But the two events were different. Through June, climate and NHS coverage had nothing in common until 19 June, when both rose together, peaked together a few days later, and fell back together by the end of the month.

May was messier. Climate and NHS coverage were already rising and falling all month, so although they still reached their highest point together around 25 May, that peak is harder to pick out from everything moving around it.

How heatwaves drove climate and health coverage

Climate News Tracker’s recent analysis of both events gives us more detail about what was behind these patterns.

During the May heatwave, the share of programmes that linked it to climate change rose and fell quickly, from around a fifth on 23 May to 93% on 25 May, then down to 19% by 27 May as the agenda shifted to open water deaths and water supply failures. Health impacts were covered in depth in only 19% of programmes across the whole period.

The June heatwave saw 18% of programmes link it to climate change on 20 June, rising to 96% on 23 June and staying above 90% as the UK’s second-ever red extreme heat warning came into force. Health coverage followed a similar arc, with hospitals declaring critical incidents and cooling systems and MRI scanners failing as the heatwave progressed.

Taken together, this suggests audiences learned two different things from the two heatwaves.

In May, most viewers got the headline temperature story and a safety warning, but comparatively little sustained explanation of either the health risks or how the heat connected to climate change, before the agenda moved on to water safety.

In June, viewers were more likely to get the climate connection and the health consequences reported side by side, which is a plausible reason coverage of the two topics moved so closely together that month.

This analysis focuses on TV and radio, where the climate link is strongest, but this is only one part of how audiences encountered news about the June heatwave. Climate news tracker also analysed 167 online articles and 269 Instagram and TikTok posts from the same period, and found the climate link dropped sharply outside broadcast, appearing in 62% of TV and radio coverage versus 24% online and just 16% on Instagram and TikTok.

What did audiences learn in Q2?

For TV and radio audiences, Q2’s climate picture came almost entirely from two weeks of extreme heat. In June, broadcasters linked the heatwave to climate change clearly and consistently, and covered the health impacts as hospitals and cooling systems struggled. May was weaker. It got the temperature record across but said less about health, and dropped the climate link once the agenda moved to water safety.

Outside those two heatwaves, climate coverage quickly fell away. Summits, reports and warnings each had a clear news peg but reached only a small fraction of audiences.

The coverage-concern gap held steady across Q1 and Q2, for different reasons. Q1’s rise came from the Iran war, which touched climate only in passing. Q2’s came from real climate and health reporting, driven by the one trigger journalists say works: extreme weather.

Both quarters show the same pattern. Coverage rises when an event forces it onto the agenda and falls back once that event passes. Public concern stays constant throughout.

A clear news peg isn’t always enough

In Climate News Tracker’s newsroom survey, 65% of journalists and production staff said climate stories do not always have a clear or timely news peg, citing it as one of the main barriers to coverage. The same survey found that extreme weather events were seen as the strongest trigger for climate coverage, ranking above government announcements, business developments and net zero debates.

With that in mind, Q2 offered several stories with the kind of peg journalists say they need, including a major report, an international summit, and a direct warning about one of the world’s biggest sporting events. Previous research shows that the opportunity to turn these news pegs into coverage was missed.

Two stories during Q2 saw more widespread coverage. The Lancet Countdown’s Europe health report (22 April) was covered by 52% of programmes, but every one of them led with the same angle, a longer hay fever season, and just 20% went on to cover the report’s more serious findings on heat deaths, food insecurity and disease. The Climate Change Committee’s adaptation report (20 May) reached 10 of 25 programmes and was covered well where it appeared, but vanished from the agenda entirely after 8pm.

Set against that, the two heatwaves stand out. They are the one story this quarter that consistently broke through, covered in 96% of programmes at the June peak.

This quarter’s gap between coverage and public concern was not down to a shortage of news pegs. An international summit, two major reports and a sporting event all offered one, and still coverage lagged behind concern. The peg that closed that gap was extreme weather, the one trigger journalists had already told us would do so.

Q2 in summary: A reactive pattern and a persistent gap

Q2 showed climate coverage as reactive rather than sustained. It rose sharply when extreme weather forced it onto the agenda, then fell back once those events passed. Public concern, by contrast, remained broadly consistent throughout the quarter.

Despite no shortage of climate news pegs, only extreme weather generated sustained attention. A summit, two major reports and a World Cup warning were just a few examples of stories that struggled to break through.

Even with June’s heatwave pushing climate coverage to its highest level of 2026, the gap with public concern never closed. It narrowed, but climate remained one of the most under-covered topics relative to how much people said they cared about it.

Methodology

Public concern data is drawn from the ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, which asks a nationally representative sample of adults to identify the issues they consider most important across 12-day collection periods.

Broadcast data covers 27 flagship TV and radio news programmes from the BBC, ITV, Sky News, Channel 4, and Channel 5.

A programme is counted as covering a topic if at least one relevant keyword appears in the transcript.

This methodology is designed to measure the frequency of topic mentions only. It does not assess the quality, prominence, or editorial stance of coverage.

Findings about the quality and content of heatwave reporting draw on Climate News Tracker’s separate event-specific analyses.

Full details of keyword selection, data processing, and error calculation are available on our methodology page.