The disaster to hit Mozambique is reported as one of the worst tropical cyclones to visit the southern hemisphere, with hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands more needing urgent assistance. I note the Guardian was the only major newspaper to lead with this story on Wednesday (Race to find survivors after deadly cyclone, 20 March).

People suffering in Mozambique and neighbouring countries didn’t create the climate crisis, but they are dying from more intense weather events like Cyclone Idai.

In the immediate instance, the people of central Mozambique need emergency relief. But what will help them, and large numbers of people across the planet, in the longer term is for rich countries to stop funding fossil-fuel extraction. It is this activity that contributes to a warming planet, increasing the likelihood and intensity of these extreme weather events.

Climate scientists are clear: storms, cyclones and floods will worsen as the planet warms. Do we sit by inertly, safe in the knowledge that cyclones don’t yet cause deaths in Britain?

Something can be done to make disasters of this scale less likely. The question is: will political leaders do it? In the UK this means stopping fracking, ending coal, not expanding Heathrow: these are the activities that worsen the climate crisis now affecting Mozambique. We need to join these up, and act.

Craig Bennett

CEO, Friends of the Earth

• Weather is how most of us experience climate change, and Bill Giles’s proposal to integrate global warming into UK weathercasts would offer a compelling way for people to connect the dots (Weather reports need climate change slots, says TV veteran, 19 March).

A successful model for that essential undertaking already exists. Across the US, hundreds of TV weathercasters discuss climate change in their weather segments – in accessible, locally relevant terms. That’s thanks to Climate Central’s Climate Matters initiative, a project launched in 2012 in collaboration with researchers across the country that delivers climate-related media packages to US weather reporters – typically pegged to current news hooks, with data customised to each city.

Polling shows that viewers trust their weathercasters to tell them the truth. Climate Matters’ rapid expansion has shown that weathercasters are eager to deliver it, helping to end the “TV news desert” around global warming. And access to Climate Matters isn’t restricted to weathercasters. Anyone can receive its free weekly bulletins.

TV coverage of climate change need not make for heavy weather.

Bernadette Woods Placky

Chief meteorologist and climate matters director, Climate Central

• How can we campaign for the BBC to do more to highlight climate change following the call by former weatherman Bill Giles for there to be a climate-change slot in its weather reports? If we only have 12 years left to try to limit the effects of climate change, the BBC and other broadcasters need to do much more.

Caroline Evans

West Ealing, London

• Your editorial (Rising temperatures are no reason to be cheerful. Forecasts should face the facts, 20 March) advocates the inclusion of information on climate change in weather forecasting. However, it goes on to discuss weather forecasts as if there wasn’t one within the pages of the paper. It would be a simple matter for the Guardian to take the lead and include a “carbon counter to counter carbon”, to show the daily measurements from the Mauna Loa observatory (currently 411 parts per million) against the safe level of 300ppm.

Daniel Scharf

Abingdon, Oxfordshire

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