Another dimension of the consequences of the climate crisis on people’s lives is revealed by data collected by Google on online searches related to “climate anxiety”.

According to the survey, searches for “climate stress” have increased, while studies show that women are more affected than men.

An increase in fires, floods and droughts around the world are just some of the signs of climate change. What is less reported, however, is the impact of climate change on the human mind.

Climate stress – defined as feelings of anxiety about the effects of climate change – has been reported worldwide, especially among children and young people.

Data from Google Trends shows that search queries related to “climate stress” have increased dramatically.

Search queries in English about “climate anxiety” in the first 10 months of 2023 are 27 times higher than the same period in 2017.

At the same time, there were increases in searches related to climate stress in other languages ​​of the world during the same period.

Portuguese search queries have increased by 73 times, Chinese by eight and a half times and Arabic by a fifth.

Google Trends data combines search queries for “climate stress” and “ecological stress,” terms that are often used the same way but have slightly different meanings.

Climate anxiety is anxiety specifically related to awareness of climate change. Ecological anxiety is a more general anxiety associated with awareness of threats to environmental health, including pollution and loss of biodiversity.

Google Trends doesn’t just measure the total volume of searches, but looks at a sample of searches to identify trends around the world. It uses a measure called “search interest” to look at the relative popularity of search queries over time.

Nordic countries had the largest share of global search queries related to climate stress over the past five years.

In fact, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway accounted for more than 40% of the search queries related to “climate stress”.

Google says its data is adjusted to account for differences in overall search volume, which allows it to compare countries of different population sizes. This is why smaller countries may top the rankings instead of the most populous.

Countries in the global South – such as Chile, the Philippines and South Africa – have a lower search rate. Countries with low search volumes have been excluded from the analysis.