Seminar: Ekaterina Bogdanovich

The frequency and intensity of temperature extremes are increasing globally, challenging various socio-economic sectors, including public health. Real-time social attention data, such as Google search frequency, could help monitor the impacts of heat waves. A study focusing on Germany shows that Google search attention responds similarly to hot temperatures as indicators of public health impacts; represented by mortality anomalies and hospitalizations.

The impacts of heat waves vary between countries with different vulnerability and exposure characteristics. In the next study, we analyze and compare the response of several societal metrics (Google search attention, excess mortality, press attention) to hot temperatures in twelve European countries. We find higher temperature thresholds in societal response in warmer countries, suggesting lower overall heat vulnerability in southern Europe. However, despite lower vulnerability as indicated by the higher temperature thresholds, the warm countries have more days with an increased societal heat response, because the heat wave temperatures are so much higher in these countries that slightly higher temperature thresholds cannot compensate.

The news media play a key role in raising awareness and providing information about heat waves and cold spells. In the third study, we analyze the evolution of sentiment during hot and cold temperature periods in newspapers in countries with different climates and vulnerabilities to climate change. We examine how the media in different countries refer to temperature in terms of number of articles and sentiment, and the extent to which the media report on climate change in news about temperature.