Met Office uses TikTok to rain on fake weather parade

THE Met Office is using social media to tackle what it claims are fake weather news and climate extremism.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Aidan McGivern, a presenter who fronts the forecaster’s videos on YouTube and TikTok, said comments spreading sensationalised weather information were common on social media.

“We try to present ourselves as the voice of authority with the weather and climate and that’s one of the reasons why it’s important to be on platforms like TikTok, because this information is being talked about all the time, but not always by the most reliable sources. So it’s important to get on there.”

The Met Office joined TikTok in 2019 but started regularly posting videos in the summer of 2020.

During February’s week of three named storms – Dudley, Eunice and Franklin – its TikTok channel had 5.4million views, 27million impressions on Twitter and more than 7.5 million impressions on Facebook.

Mr McGivern added: “Climate change is a huge talking point. And we do see both extremes of the conversation, whether it’s people denying that it’s happening on one hand, versus people who are frightened that Armageddon is happening.

“And so we don’t go down either route, because that’s not what the science is saying.

“We make sure that what we’re saying is consistent with what climate science is saying – so if, say, for example, there’s a heatwave, and people are questioning whether it’s down to global warming.

“Then we’ll talk to the climate scientists that we’ve got here at the Met Office, because sometimes there can be a link made between a heatwave and global warming. Sometimes it’s just natural variability in the weather.

“So we make sure that we always bring it back to the science and that we’re presenting accurate information and that we don’t try to sensationalise it just for clicks.”

Last year the Met Office corrected Scarlett Moffatt, the reality star, when she claimed on TikTok that “30 per cent chance of rain” on a weather app actually means that 30 per cent of a given area will be covered by rain.

In a video on the Met Office TikTok channel weatherman Alex Deakin said: “On this one, actually, Scarlett is wrong. Certainly for the Met Office app, the percentage of rain means the chance of rain at that time for that location.”