In a recent revelation that could reshape our understanding of the climate’s impact on our daily lives, MIT researchers have uncovered a link between sweltering heat and souring global moods, a study now suggesting that as the mercury climbs, so does the collective grumpiness around the world. Using a massive pool of 1.2 billion social media posts pulled from 157 nations, the team discovered that sentiment turns sharply negative as temperatures soar past the 95 degrees Fahrenheit mark—by a notable 25 percent dip in lower-income countries and approximately 8 percent in wealthier ones; this, according to MIT News.
“This work opens up a new frontier in understanding how climate stress is shaping human well-being at a planetary scale,” Siqi Zheng, an MIT professor involved in the study, noted the seriousness of the findings which emphasize not only the physical and economic tolls of rising temperatures but the emotional burden on populations worldwide. Zheng, a professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for Real Estate, co-authored the paper titled “Unequal Impacts of Rising Temperatures on Global Human Sentiment”, published today in One Earth, alongside Jianghao Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, graduate Nicolas Guetta-Jeanrenaud, visiting assistant professor Juan Palacios, Yichun Fan from SUL and Duke University, Devika Kakkar of Harvard University, and Nick Obradovich from SUL and the Laureate Institute for Brain Research.
The study’s vast dataset came from platforms Twitter and Weibo, with posts from the year 2019 analyzed using BERT—a natural language processing method that gauged the emotional tone in 65 different languages, providing an aggregate sentiment rating between extreme positives and negatives, “Social media data provides us with an unprecedented window into human emotions across cultures and continents,” Jianghao Wang told MIT News, asserting the value of such a novel approach in assessing the psychological footprints of climate change.
The researchers took it a step further, considering the economic status of the countries in question through World Bank gross national income cutoffs, they found that those living in less affluent areas are hit thrice as hard by the emotional impact of intense heat than their counterparts in more prosperous locales. The study’s findings don’t just sit at the intersection of meteorology and mood they offer a glimpse into the disparate effects climate change wreaks on different strata of global society, and, looking ahead to 2100, the projected implications for emotional well-being under rising temperatures could see a 2.3 percent decline—a prospect that Nick Obradovich says highlights the growing importance of nurturing resilience to the emotional shocks posed by shifts in weather and climate.
It’s worth noting that the study acknowledges its limitations: not all demographics are equally represented on social media, especially the very young and the elderly who might be particularly susceptible to the adverse effects of heat, meaning the true impact could be even more extensive than their data indicates. The Global Sentiment project led by MIT’s Sustainable Urbanization Lab includes the study’s dataset as a public resource, an initiative that Siqi Zheng hopes will assist researchers, policymakers, and everyone in between in fortifying against the challenges of a warming planet.