Google searches around 'climate anxiety' have risen, says study

A study has said that online searches around 'climate anxiety' have risen sharply amid increased frequency of flood, droughts and wildfires across the globe, said a report in BBC.

The data in this regard was gathered by Google and shared exclusively with BBC. The data has also revealed that women are more affected by "climate anxiety" than men.

Climate anxiety is referred to as a feeling of distress about climate change impacts. This is becoming common across the world, especially among children and young people.

The searches around the topic have increased many times than before, revealed Google Trends data.

As reported by BBC, the data has revealed that searches related to climate anxiety from January to October this year were 27 times higher than those in the same period in 2017.

Some specific observations were made about search surges in some specific languages. Portuguese saw a 73-fold increase, while Simplified Chinese saw an eight-and-a-half times increase. Searches in Arabic rose by a fifth.

The gathered data combined searches made with the terms "climate anxiety" and "eco-anxiety". These search terms are often used interchangeably in spite of slight differences in meaning.

The data has also taken a look at a metric called "search interest". This metric measures the comparative popularity of search terms over a period of time.

It has reportedly been found that Nordic countries have consistently topped the list of countries contributing the largest portions of search queries about climate anxiety.

Google has said that adjustments have been made to the data so that countries with different population sizes can be compared at the same level. Due to this, countries with smaller populations may rank higher than those with larger populations.

The analysis found that countries in the Global South, for example,the Philippines, Chile and South Africa contributed smaller percentages of search queries related to 'climate anxiety'.