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(CNN) -- "Murderers." "Criminals." "We are watching you."

These are just some of the threats and abuses sent to meteorologists from AEMET, Spain's State Meteorological Agency, in recent months. They come through social media, their website, letters, phone calls, even in the form of graffiti sprayed on one of their buildings.

Abuse and harassment "have always happened" against the agency's scientists, Estrella Gutierrez-Marco, a spokeswoman for AEMET, told CNN.

But there was a rapid increase recently, coinciding with extreme weather in Spain. A severe drought reduced water levels to alarming levels, exacerbated by April's record temperatures.

The harassment was so severe that, in April, AEMET posted a video on Twitter calling for an end to the harassment and asking for respect. Even the government intervened. Teresa Ribera, Spain's minister for ecological transition, tweeted in support of the agency: "Lying, giving wings to conspiracy and fear, insulting... It's time to say enough is enough."

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The harassment of meteorologists by conspiracy theorists and climate deniers is not a phenomenon confined to Spain.

National weather services, meteorologists and climate communicators in countries from the U.S. to Australia say they are experiencing an increase in threats and harassment, often around accusations that they are exaggerating, lying or even controlling the weather.

Usually submerged ruins of the ancient village of Aceredo, appearing in the reservoir of the Lindoso hydroelectric plant due to low water level, near Lobios, northwestern Spain, on February 15, 2022. Cermelo Alen/AFP/Getty Images

In the case of Spain, much of the harassment revolves around the repetition of an old conspiracy theory: the so-called "chemtrails".

In many of the agency's Twitter posts, especially those referring to more extreme weather, users posted images of blue skies, crisscrossed with faint white trails. They falsely claim that the trails contain a cocktail of chemicals to artificially manipulate the weather, keeping rain away and causing climate change.

It is a theory roundly rejected by scientists.

Airplanes release contrails of steam, short for contrails, which form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals around the tiny particles emitted by jet engines.

But scientists have been clear: There's no evidence that chemtrails exist.

'One of the hardest experiences'

In April, meteorologist Isabel Moreno wrote a tweet that read "The rains practically dodge Spain," with an image of a strip of rain that stretches across Europe but does not reach Spain almost completely. She was not prepared for the answer.

"It was one of the hardest experiences of my life on social media," said Moreno, who appears on Spanish television channel RTVE. "I received HUNDREDS of responses to a (seemingly) harmless tweet," he told CNN in an email.

Many accused her of covering up weather manipulation.

"Don't take us for," said one. "They dry us up, and you as spokesmen for those who do it," said another. And so on.

While there were also many messages of support, it was terrifying, Moreno said. "I've never seen that amount of response or that level of aggression." It took her days to be able to return to Twitter without feeling anxious or stressed.

This phenomenon may be particularly pronounced in Spain, but it extends much further.

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In France, meteorologists have been accused of exaggerating the country's drought and heat.

Météo France, the French National Meteorological Service, said the agency's communications are "subject to increasingly repeated attacks," a spokesperson for Météo France told CNN.

Climate misinformation on social media is particularly widespread, he said. "It seems to be increasing, both because of the number of attacks directed against scientific publications and because of the increasingly aggressive tone of insults."

In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology has been bombarded with criticism for its reports of temperature records, with claims that they have been inflated to make climate change look worse. A BOM spokeswoman called these claims inaccurate. "The Bureau transparently reports and provides access to its very large climate data records," he said.

And in the UK, meteorologists reported unprecedented levels of online harassment during last year's record heatwave, leading to the first "red warning" of heat.

"When scientists communicated this information, they were accused of instigating state hysteria," Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, told CNN.

The Met Office was even accused of changing the color palette of its maps to make them look more dramatic. "We hadn't done it, it was very hot," Oliver Claydon, communications officer for the Met Office, told CNN.

Firefighters contain a bushfire on July 20, 2022 in Sheffield, England. Several fires broke out across the UK during an unprecedented heatwave. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

American meteorologists and climate communicators have not escaped the barrage of abuses and conspiracies.

"Every time I posted on global issues, like the annual temperature report, the comments section was filled with political punches and conspiracy theories," said Elisa Raffa, a broadcast meteorologist for Queen City News, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

As a woman in the media, she gets more comments about her appearance than about the science she communicates, she told CNN.

Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Center for Climate Research, said she's seen an increase in abuse lately.

"I receive almost daily verbal statements of my ignorance and climate alarmism," he told CNN.

An erosion of trust

Some disinformation experts draw a straight line from the conspiracies that flourished during the covid-19 pandemic — when experts faced a host of abuses — to the rise of climate conspiracies.

People need "trending" topics on which to hang these theories, said Alexandre López-Borrull, a professor in the Department of Information and Communication Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain.

As covid-19 fades from the headlines, climate change has become a strong rallying point. There has been a huge increase in "insults directed at all climate-related organizations," he told CNN.

"It's a logical evolution of the broader trend around rejection of institutions and erosion of trust," said Jennie King, director of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on disinformation and extremism.

These kinds of conspiracies are usually based on the idea that a set of institutions is "using the pretext of climate change, or the pretext of solving public policy problems, to enact an insidious agenda," he told CNN.

And the weather is an easy way in. Many aspects of climate science may seem very technical or abstract, but weather is something people interact with frequently, King said.

"It's a much more immediate way to bring a wider audience to that skepticism ... plant seeds of doubt against the broader climate agenda," he said.

The Hoover Dam on September 16, 2022 in Boulder City, Nevada. Drought caused by climate change has pushed Lake Mead's water levels to record lows. David McNew/Getty Images

The role meteorologists have in explaining how climate change affects climate, especially extreme weather, is a particular critical point.

Extreme weather can be alarming, especially when there are consequences and sacrifices, such as Spain's water restrictions.

Conspiracy theories feed on this fear by offering a simple and tantalizing explanation, Lopez-Borrull said. It is easier to believe that climate change is fake, or a manipulation of powerful people, than to understand the complex problem and what it means for society.

"Change is difficult and scary," Francis said.

"I'm just trying to do my job."

It's hard to combat conspiracy theories when they arise. Some experts say they offer simple graphs and rebuttals when they can, but try to ignore those who come in bad faith.

Doug McNeall, a climate scientist and statistician at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. research center, said that, as a scientist, he appreciates challenges. "If people come up with better evidence and you change your mind, that's good," he told CNN.

But that has not been his recent experience. "These people didn't come with better evidence," he said. "They were coming to stop us from talking about climate science." Now he relies much more on the lock button.

Moreno echoed this. "I find it very difficult to change the mindset of people who actually have strong beliefs in these conspiracies," he said. First, it's easier to keep ideas from taking root in people by addressing myths and explaining how the atmosphere works, he added.

This kind of communication can really help, King said. Some of the best initiatives are "when the media or scientific institutions are really trying to demystify the process of producing public interest data," he said.

King worries about the impact of these conspiracies on climate policy. "If we want to implement any policy, ambitious or not, around the environmental agenda and the acute crisis of climate change, now it looks like this is going to rear its head," he said.

López-Borrull hopes meteorologists and climate communicators will persevere and not shy away from online spaces.

"The answer is not to disappear or close social media profiles... they have to stay on social media because they're really useful," Lopez-Borrull said.

But as the climate crisis causes more extreme weather, harassment could increase even more.

And it takes its toll, Raffa said.

"I think it's easy for people to forget I'm human, some of those comments can be hurtful. I'm just trying to do my job."

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