Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change
Open accessAbstract
Significance: Climate change exposes people to conditions that are historically unusual but that will become increasingly common over time. What kind of weather do people think of as normal or unusual under these changing conditions? We use the volume of social media posts about weather to measure the remarkability of different temperatures and show that remarkability changes rapidly with repeated exposure to unusual temperatures. The reference point for normal conditions appears to be based on weather experienced between 2 and 8 y ago. This rapidly shifting normal baseline means warming noticed by the general public may not be clearly distinguishable from zero over the 21st century, with potential implications for both the acceptance of global warming and public pressure for mitigation policies.
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Public perception and understanding of climate change has remained polarized.
“Public perception about the reality of climate change has remained polarized”
From Credibility of climate change denial in social media (2019) · cites this paper as Moore et al., 2019
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VADER: a parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text
Hutto, C., & Gilbert, E. (2014) · Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media · doi:10.1609/icwsm.v8i1.14550 · Cited by 6,087 · see citing works
Climate change, mortality, and adaptation: Evidence from annual fluctuations in weather in the US
Deschênes, O., & Greenstone, M. (2011) · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics · doi:10.1257/app.3.4.152 · Cited by 1,064 · see citing works
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Garmany, A., Yamada, S., & Terzic, A. (2021) · npj Regenerative Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41536-021-00169-5 · Cited by 252 · see citing works
Development of future heatwaves for different hazard thresholds
Vogel, M. M., Zscheischler, J., Fischer, E. M., & Seneviratne, S. I. (2020) · Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres · doi:10.1029/2019jd032070 · Cited by 152 · see citing works
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Samantray, A., & Pin, P. (2019) · Palgrave Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-019-0344-4 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
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AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance
Liu, G., Christian, B., Dumbalska, T., Bakker, M. A., & Dubey, R. (2026) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2604.04721 · Cited by 3
“This is analogous to the “boiling frog” effect, where each incremental act feels costless, until the cumulative effect becomes overwhelming to address (Moore et al., 2019; Kasirzadeh, 2025; Liu et al., 2025).”
- Authors
- Moore, F. C., Obradovich, N., Lehner, F., & Baylis, P.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Davis (US)
- MIT Media Lab (US)
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2019-02-25
- Volume
- 116
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 4905-4910
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC6421414
- OpenAlex
- W2915991768
- Cited by
- 237
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 41 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 42 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 10
- FWCI
- 49.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Climate Change and Health Impacts
- Keywords
- climate change perception, temperature anomalies, shifting baselines, social media sentiment, extreme weather events, public understanding of climate change, cognitive biases, anthropogenic climate change, decadal temperature trends, United States
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Perception, Seasons, Temperature, United States, Climate Change, Social Media
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