Media meteorologist Jill Peeters is back on air as weather forecaster and climate expert for VTM and HLN

Climate expert Jill Peeters (46) is making her comeback at VTM and HLN after just over two years. Everyone knows her as 'the weather lady', a role she already fulfilled between 2000 and 2019, but now she is expanding her role.

“Climate and weather are of the utmost importance and therefore also to the news editors of News City,” said Nicholas Lataire, director of News City. “As we speak we already have a very strong weather forecasters team with Frank Duboccage and David Dehenauw. By adding Jill Peeters, we are convinced that we will be leading in in reporting about weather and climate, but also about the natural crisis.

Alternating with her colleagues Frank Duboccage and David Dehenauw, Jill Peeters will make the weather forecast for VTM NIEUWS. But there is more: Jill will explicitly focus on the climate issue.

When Jill Peeters stopped working as a weather forecaster two years ago, she didn't do so because she no longer liked the job. “Wherever I go, I always live with my head in the clouds. I feel like a weather woman and that will never go away, even if I no longer work with the weather models on a daily basis," says Jill Peeters.

But she adds: “The drama that took place this summer, with the floods in our country, made me realize even more that I want to take up my responsibility. There is a need for someone who can explain in a clear way the extreme things that happen to our weather and to nature. As a weather forecaster, I am in a privileged position to follow and explain these phenomena.”

In recent years Jill Peeters pore upon this matter, in order to understand it even better and to build a clear story around it. Last year she made the prestigious TV series about the climate and nature crisis 'What stops us?' on the national TV broadcast Canvas, and she set up a training program at KU Leuven University, where entrepreneurs work on their sustainable leadership.

“That means that she returns as an expert and authority in that area,” says editor-in-chief Michiel Ameloot of VTM NIEUWS. “Like no other, Jill can explain the reality of climate disruption to a large audience. Weather and climate are changing at a rapid pace, at VTM NIEUWS we can use Jill to show that to Flanders and the world.”

This increased expertise will also benefit HLN. Jill Peeters will make online documentaries around the themes of weather and climate that can be viewed at HLN. “In recent years it became clear to me that this is really extremely important,” says Jill Peeters. “I get more and more questions about extreme weather, about climate disruption... But the debate often gets distorted and polarized. 
I want to use my knowledge and expertise to create a space where people can listen to substantiated, scientific facts, with a genuine concern for the urgency of the enormous challenge we face. 
But I also believe that we can evolve towards a more beautiful world. That is why I am happy to take up this role again, a role that is now being fulfilled differently due to climate disruption. Despite the fact that a lot has changed in those two years it still feels a bit like coming home.”