Search Activity in Google as an Indicator of Interest in the Issue of Climate Change in Cities

Abstract

Growing cl imate threats require adequate action from the world community and individual countries. Therefore, today it is extremely important for international and national sustainable development pol icies to obtain rel iable data on the attitude of the publ ic in different countries to the issue of cl imate change. An increase in the level of awareness of the world ' s population regarding cl imate change may be used as a rel iable indicator of this issue. A promising tool for studying it is the Google Trends search query counting service. The article presents a comparative analysis of interest in cl imate change in the cities of the world and actual cl imate variabi l i ty in these cities. To i l lustrate the processes of cl imate change, the temperature variabi l i ty ratings for the largest cities of the world and Russia for a period of 36 years between 1 980 are 201 6 are given. I t is shown that for Russia, cl imate problems become more urgent with the occurrence of significant negative consequences. Cl imate issues are becoming more important for Russia, but the awareness of significant negative consequences is negl ig ible. As a result, there is a low correlation between global search and temperature trends.