Unpleasant weather brings out unpleasant emotions on social media, study shows

Heat spells and downpours are serious mood killers, a huge analysis of Twitter conversations confirms. The international study is part of efforts to understand how climate change affects mental health around the world.

Scrutinizing tweets from 190 countries, nearly every one on Earth, researchers looked at how “positive” and “negative” expressions shifted during extreme heat and rainfall events. Unsurprisingly, they found that during bad weather, negative sentiments became noisier and positive expressions became few and far between in each region. While it might seem obvious that bad weather can put people in bad moods, researchers see the consistency of the findings as a warning that people might be struggling to adapt to climate...

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