A study assesses the influence of declining remarkability of temperature anomalies on public perceptions of climate change. Although researchers commonly use fixed baseline periods to assess weather changes, the baseline used by the general public to evaluate weather as normal or unusual remains unclear. Frances C. Moore and colleagues used a sample of 2.18 billion geolocated US tweets created between March 2014 and November 2016 to determine what kind of temperatures generated the most posts on Twitter. People were more likely to tweet about temperatures that were unusual for a particular place and time of year than typical weather patterns. However, if those unusual temperatures were repeatedly experienced year after year, the number of comments quickly declined. The finding suggests that people use temperatures from the previous 2-8 years as a normal baseline against which to evaluate current weather conditions. Because this normal baseline adjusts quickly, the results suggest that major warming expected from climate change in the 21st century may not be perceived as particularly unusual or remarkable, according to the authors.
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Article #18-16541: "Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change," by Frances C. Moore, Nick Obradovich, Flavio Lehner, and Patrick Baylis.
MEDIA CONTACT: Frances C. Moore, University of California Davis, CA; tel: 617-233-3380; email: <fmoore@ucdavis.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences