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  • Is the weather getting weirder? Your answer probably depends on the weirdness of the weather

  • youve been experiencing lately.

  • For example, after the U.K. got doused with one of its rainiest weeks on record, the Brits

  • who reported experiencing flooding were much more likely than their drier compatriots to

  • say they'd noticed wetter and wetter weather over the course of their lives. And before

  • a withering drought struck the American Midwest in 2012, only 41% of residents thought they

  • detected a long-term uptick in the frequency and intensity of dry spellsbut after

  • that one dessicating summer, 66% said they’d been seeing worsening droughts for decades.

  • Rain or shine, our minds tend to prize their freshest impressions.

  • But even when we experience the same weird weather events as other people, we don’t

  • always agree on how weird they actually were. Data from more than 4000 meteorological stations

  • tell us that the winter of 2012 was the third-warmest on record in the U.S. But according to the

  • Americans who lived through it...well, those who thought of global climate change as a

  • serious, man-made threat were significantly more likely to report that their local winter

  • weather had been warmer than usual. Even after adjusting for beliefs about global warming,

  • there was a political divide, with Democrats more likely than Republicans to rate the winter

  • as unusually toasty

  • Clouding the issue further, these days we get less of our weather information first-hand

  • and more from the media, where different channels compete for our attention by mentioningextreme

  • weatherfar more often than they used to and spicing up not-so-apocalyptic events with

  • terms likepolar vortexandsnowmaggedon.’ The Weather Channel has even co-opted the

  • World Meteorological Organization's practice of naming destructive tropical storms by christening

  • every biggish snowstorm that trundles over North America.

  • With so many sources of information, it’s easy for us to choose the ones that align

  • with our broader worldviews, no matter what they are. As a result, much of what we hear

  • about the frequency of extreme weather can end up reinforcing whatever we already believe,

  • rather than giving us new information about what's really going on.

  • So, did this video tell you what you wanted

  • to hear?

Is the weather getting weirder? Your answer probably depends on the weirdness of the weather

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