As the debate intensifies behind the forces of Mother Nature, the most visible spokespeople, the television weathercasters themselves, have become the tip of the iceberg when it comes to even the slightest changes in weather, or degrees.

Last week, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and George Mason University released a study revealing that TV weathercasters can play an important role as informal science educators with many of them holding a varying degree of uncertainty when it came to climate change.

"People who don't believe in climate change are more likely to have something like 'climategate' confirm their previously held beliefs," the lead investigator of the University of Texas at Austin and George Mason University study, Edward Maibach, told Xinhua in a recent telephone interview.

DIFFERENT RESPONSES

The online survey, which was the largest and most representative survey of television weathercasters, included respondents from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the National Weather Association (NWA), is also being billed as the census of television weathercasters.

With two-thirds of those surveyed showing an interest in reporting on climate change, the findings also found that weathercasters held a wide range of beliefs regarding global warming.

More than half of respondents believe the planet is experiencing global warming, while a quarter indicated that "it isn't" happening and 21 percent "don't know yet."

Maibach, also the director of the George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication, pointed to the fact that 73 percent of the respondents from the survey trust climatologists.

While meteorologists study short-term weather forecasting, climatologists study long-term weather trends.

"Meteorologists and the public both have just this huge misperception that there isn't scientific consensus on climate change," he said.

"Only one-third of the public and only one-third TV meteorologists believe that scientists are of one mind on this issue," Maibach said.

"But in reality the climate scientists are of one mind of this issue," Maibach added. Maibach said the majority of weathercasters felt there was a disagreement amongst scientists regarding the issue of global warming, which in itself lays the misperception.