We cannot escape escape weather
On the return of spring and the inevitable effect of weather on our well-being
Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.
Spring has started to arrive in southern Sweden. Over the weekend the sun came out, the temperature started to rise and the air smelt of newly awakened soil. The days are getting longer and longer. Walking and biking across Malmö you could see people bringing out chairs on the sidewalks, their coffee mugs in hand, soaking up the sun, wearing big smiles.
Living in a country that (at least still) has four fairly defined seasons, moving into the lighter season is such a reminder of life. As the snow has melted away, sprouting flowers and plants are peeking up everywhere. They’ve been hibernating beneath the white sheet of snow, slowly growing, getting ready to show themselves to us as nature starts to wake up. It feels like a return of life, movement and joy. Going out into the first trembling days of spring, feeling the sun on your face perhaps for the first time in five months, lifting your chin up towards the sky; it’s almost a cultural ritual for us who live in the Nordics.
It also serves as a reminder that weather directly affects us. And whilst climate isn’t the same as weather, one of the most profound effects of climate change is on weather patterns. There’s no escaping weather, and no escaping that weather is related to our well-being.
How weather affects our well-being
Through much environmental psychology research it’s well established that people are affected by their natural environments. Weather conditions are an important component of this, and include dimensions like light, temperature, wind, humidity, air quality and extreme weather events. How these dimensions relate, directly and indirectly to well-being is explored in a review published last year in Frontiers. They explore various theories of how weather related to people’s well-being: from Lyubomirsky’s happiness formula (i.e. that a person’s well-being is affected by genetic factors to 50%, by individual behavior to 40% and by environmental factors to 10%), to evolutionary psychology theories suggesting the inherent preference for non-threatening environmental factors, as these through human history have been associated with greater survival chances. If our ancestors were happy during sunny, calm days, why shouldn’t we be?
But looking at more current, empirical research, it becomes clear that it’s a bit more complex than sunny days equalling happy people, and gloomy weather equalling gloomy mood.
Light can often act as a mood regulator, with studies showing how people report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction on sunny days compared to rainy days. But sunlight isn’t all joyous, as other studies have shown how sunshine can increase both positive and negative emotions. A climate related dimension of how sunshine and heat is perceived are so called affective dilemmas that Mosquera and Jylhä write about in their paper on norms around climate emotions. Warm and sunny days are usually associated with joy and happiness, and can physiologically feel pleasant. But as the climate crisis intensifies, sun and heat can also increasingly be associated with planetary destruction, causing the affective dilemma of whether it’s okey to feel happy about the sun, or whether the sun merely should act as a reminder of the climate crisis. In my clinical work, this often comes up: sunny weather being a trigger of climate anxiety, and cloudy, cooler days a comforter that perhaps things aren’t as bad as you thought.
Is it the sun itself or what the sun enables?
Being positively affected by sunny, clear days, can also have to do with the fact that sunny days allows for more outdoor activities, encouraging both physical activity and offer possibilities of meeting other people outside. Two things that are known for their positive benefits on well-being. Being outside and getting light exposure can also have additional benefits like increased vitamin D and beneficial production of other neurochemicals such as melatonin and serotonin, that play a part in one’s overall health.
Also affecting people’s tendency to go and stay outside is the surrounding air quality. Poor air quality is a substantial problem in parts of the world. And there’s much evidence that it has a direct impact on people’s mental health and happiness. Higher levels of pollutants are associated with decreased levels of happiness. But also levels of carbon dioxide itself can, according to new research, become so high in the next half-century that it might make the atmosphere we breathe dangerous for people’s health.
Extreme weather doesn’t make us happy
With the climate crisis, the frequency and length of extreme heat is increasing. In light of that (no pun intended) it’s worth noting that there seems to be an inverted U-shaped relationship between temperature and happiness. Temperatures that exceed 21°C (70°F) are associated with reduced positive emotions and increased negative emotions, as well as more tiredness, especially when humidity is high. In Sweden have a word called lagom, which translates to “just about right”. As for temperature and well-being, lagom, seems to be best. As extreme heat is becoming more common, there’s much reason to fear that a scorching hot sun will bring out more negative than positive emotions. In fact, getting people to more clearly associate extreme heat with danger can be life-saving and is a reason why media shouldn’t visualize heat-waves with happy beachgoers, as I’ve written about before.
So called extreme weather events (EWE), like heatwaves, hurricanes and floods, are quite unsurprisingly influencing people’s overall well-being. Having been exposed to the direct dangers of an EWE is associated to increased levels of depression and anxiety. In their review of how weather affects well-being, Zhang and Li write that climate events play an important role in shaping long-term psychological well-being, through both past experiences of EWEs and expectations about future climate related impacts. Being exposed to extreme weather is distressing, while it’s happening, but also because people need to deal with lasting damages from the EWE.
I’m sure we’ll get back to the topic of how communities can nurture a stronger resilience to help their communities prepare for and deal with the direct effects of extreme weather (in our upcoming book, we explore this topic more in depth). In the meantime we can conclude that weather affects us. Weather is an inevitable part of living on this planet, and as such it is both at the heart of certain cultural rituals, sparking conversations, affecting mood and sometime - in it’s extreme forms - posing direct danger.
As for now, I will go out into the fresh spring air, lift my chin up towards the sun, soak in the feeling of awakening. Of having made it through yet another dark season. And be reminded of how we are inevitably bound to nature. That we, in fact, are nature.
Spring’s arrival in southern Sweden sounds beautifully vivid, and your description of the shift in mood as the days grow longer is something I’ve noticed in my own community as well.