A 43-Million-Person Investigation into Weather and Expressed Sentiment in a Changing Climate

Abstract

© 2020 The Authors Climate change poses a grave threat to humans. This study couples meteorological conditions with over 400 million geotagged social media posts across 43 million users in China to investigate how weather extremes influence individuals' expressed sentiment. We find that extreme weather worsens emotional expressions on social media. Females and individuals in poorer cities are more affected by extreme temperatures. Our findings highlight the potentially harmful impacts of climate change on future psychological well-being.