From late June through July, successive heat waves swept across large portions of the United States, breaking temperature records and placing more than 100 million people at a time under heat alerts. ABC, CBS, and NBC closely tracked the extreme heat as it moved across the country, repeatedly reporting threatened or broken records and warning viewers about dangerous conditions.

What the networks did not explain was why these events kept arriving in rapid succession. Instead, viewers saw extensive reporting on dangerous and record-breaking heat without an explanation of how human-caused warming is making such extreme weather more frequent and severe.

• Topline findings

• A Media Matters analysis of corporate broadcast news coverage of extreme heat in the United States during the four-week period from June 29 through July 26 found:

  • ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 194 segments about the three major heat events that struck large parts of the country during the studied period.
  • ABC aired 80 such segments, NBC aired 75, and CBS aired 39 — but none mentioned climate change.
     

• Broadcast news extensively covered three major U.S. heat waves without mentioning climate change

• Three major heat waves struck the United States in rapid succession from late June through July. The first brought dangerous, record-breaking temperatures to much of the central and eastern United States over the Fourth of July weekend, forcing some communities to cancel holiday events as temperatures reached 100 degrees in parts of the Northeast. A second heat dome broke records across the northern Rockies before spreading into the Midwest and East in mid-July. By late July, another exceptionally strong system was building over the Rockies and Plains and expanding across the central United States, where it was expected to linger through much of the following week.

  Extreme heat has one of the clearest established links to human-caused climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of observed changes in extreme temperatures, and heat waves have become more frequent and intense across most land regions since the 1950s.

  Event-specific analyses make that connection even more immediate. World Weather Attribution found that the humid heat forecast over the Fourth of July weekend would have been “so extreme as to be virtually impossible” in a preindustrial climate. Climate Central found that human-caused warming made temperatures of that intensity at least three times as likely to occure.

  Climate Central found a similarly strong climate fingerprint during the subsequent heat waves. Human-caused warming made the mid-July heat at least three times more likely across large parts of the western and northern United States. Global warming made the extreme temperatures during the late-July heat dome at least five times more likely.

  Across 194 segments, news coverage on the three major corporate broadcast networks tracked the heat waves’ movement, warned of dangerous temperatures, and reported threatened or broken records. At points during the study period, more than 100 million people were under heat alerts. But not one segment connected the nearly back-to-back extreme heat events to climate change, including segments that described the conditions as historic, exceptional, or record-breaking.

• U.S. corporate broadcast networks continue to treat climate context as optional in extreme heat coverage

• Across recent summers, ABC, CBS, and NBC have repeatedly covered dangerous and record-breaking heat without consistently explaining how human-caused warming is making extreme heat more frequent and severe. Even their strongest recent performance left climate change out of more than four-fifths of the coverage.

  In May 2023, broadcast networks aired a combined 6 minutes about a record-breaking Pacific Northwest heat wave without mentioning climate change. During the first major U.S. heat wave of 2024, just 7 of 43 broadcast segments, or 16%, made the connection — the highest rate among the major extreme weather events Media Matters reviewed that year.

  Coverage making that connection has become even rarer over the following summers. ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 83 segments about the record-breaking eastern U.S. heat dome in June 2025, but only 3 mentioned climate change (all were on CBS). And this year, the same three networks aired 194 segments across three nearly back-to-back heat events without mentioning climate change once.

  But climate context does not have to displace forecasts, warnings, or immediate reporting about public safety. During the United Kingdom’s heat wave in June, Climate News Tracker researchers monitored 188 television and radio programs from major public-service media organizations, 162 of which covered the heat wave in some form. Of those, 62% linked it to climate change, often through weather presenters who incorporated the explanation into routine forecasts and warnings.

  Although the U.K. coverage study examined different media ecosystems, it documents a clear difference in reporting practice. British public-service broadcasters frequently treated climate change as part of the basic explanation for extreme heat, while American corporate broadcast networks have continued to largely ignore the scientific attribution to human-caused warming — even as the heat they cover becomes more and more severe.

• Methodology

• Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, GMA3, and World News Tonight; CBS’ Mornings, Saturday Morning, Sunday Morning, and Evening News; and NBC’s Today, Today 3rd Hour, and Nightly News for any of the terms “heat,” “heat wave,” “heatwave,” “heat dome,” “heatdome,” “temperature,” “hot,” “hotter,” or “hottest” from June 29, 2026, through July 26, 2026.

  We included segments, which we defined as instances when extreme heat events were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the event. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the event with one another.

  We did not include mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned an event without another speaker engaging with the comment, or teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the event scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

  We then reviewed the identified segments for whether they mentioned climate change or global warming.