March 13, 2019

The New Normal Weather

Listen Later

2 minutes

We often hear about how the weather is getting stranger all the time, but do most of us really think so? What kinds of weather do we really find remarkable and has that been changing?

A study led by the University of California, Davis used some very

modern tools to examine the question of what people might consider to be

“normal” weather. To reach their

conclusions, they quantified the timeless pastime of talking about the weather

by analyzing Twitter posts. They sampled

over 2 billion geolocated tweets to determine what kind of events generated the

most posts about the weather.

Unsurprisingly, they found that people most often tweet when temperatures

are unusual for a particular place and time of year. However, if the same weather persisted year

after year, it generated less comment on Twitter, indicating that people began

to view it as normal in a relatively short amount of time.

The study indicates that people have short memories when it comes to

what they consider normal weather. On

average, most people base their idea of normal weather on what has happened in

just the past two up to maybe eight years.

This disconnect with the historical climate record may obscure the

public’s perception of climate change.

After repeat exposures to historically-extreme temperatures, people

talk less about the weather, even though particularly hot or cold weather

conditions make them unhappy and grumpy.

Even though we are experiencing conditions that are historically

extreme, we might not consider them to be particularly unusual if we tend to

forget what happened more than a few years ago.

Things may be getting worse, but they apparently are just the new normal.

**********

Web Links

Tweets tell scientists how quickly we normalize unusual weather

Photo, posted March 11, 2013, courtesy of Adedotun Ajibade via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

...more

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Earth Wise

By Randy Simon

4.7

1515 ratings

March 13, 2019

The New Normal Weather

Listen Later

2 minutes

We often hear about how the weather is getting stranger all the time, but do most of us really think so? What kinds of weather do we really find remarkable and has that been changing?

A study led by the University of California, Davis used some very

modern tools to examine the question of what people might consider to be

“normal” weather. To reach their

conclusions, they quantified the timeless pastime of talking about the weather

by analyzing Twitter posts. They sampled

over 2 billion geolocated tweets to determine what kind of events generated the

most posts about the weather.

Unsurprisingly, they found that people most often tweet when temperatures

are unusual for a particular place and time of year. However, if the same weather persisted year

after year, it generated less comment on Twitter, indicating that people began

to view it as normal in a relatively short amount of time.

The study indicates that people have short memories when it comes to

what they consider normal weather. On

average, most people base their idea of normal weather on what has happened in

just the past two up to maybe eight years.

This disconnect with the historical climate record may obscure the

public’s perception of climate change.

After repeat exposures to historically-extreme temperatures, people

talk less about the weather, even though particularly hot or cold weather

conditions make them unhappy and grumpy.

Even though we are experiencing conditions that are historically

extreme, we might not consider them to be particularly unusual if we tend to

forget what happened more than a few years ago.

Things may be getting worse, but they apparently are just the new normal.

**********

Web Links

Tweets tell scientists how quickly we normalize unusual weather

Photo, posted March 11, 2013, courtesy of Adedotun Ajibade via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

...more