One climate forecast, many online conversations

A climate forecast may begin with careful scientific wording, probabilities, and measured uncertainty. Once it reaches social media, however, it enters everyday life. People connect it to floods they remember, crops they worry about, strange weather outside their window, news headlines, professional updates, jokes, and doubts.

El Niño – a naturally occurring climate pattern caused by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific, which can influence weather patterns far beyond the region – is especially suited to this kind of journey. Many people experience the phenomenon through heavier rain, heat, drought, pressure on crops, food security concerns, disaster planning, or ordinary conversations about what the next season might bring.

A recent study by IIASA researchers Dmitry Erokhin and Nadejda Komendantova titled, El Niño Discourse and the Limits of Single-Platform Inference, examined how public discussion of El Niño appeared across six social media platforms in May 2026. Published in the journal Information, the study analyzed 8,145 posts and comments from X/Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

The timing was chosen around an El Niño Watch issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on 14 May, which signaled that El Niño was likely to develop and gave people, news media, and institutions a shared moment to react. By following the days before and after that announcement, the study could compare how the same climate signal travelled across different online spaces.

Different platforms, different conversations

Social media research often depends on a particular platform. Sometimes that choice is practical, since one site may be easier to access, offer more public data, or fit the habits of a research field. A study based on one platform can still be valuable, as long as its limits are clear. The difficulty starts when evidence from a single platform is used to describe online discussion as a whole.

In the El Niño study, views changed with the platform. On X/Twitter, El Niño appeared as a large, fast-moving, multilingual stream. Weather updates, news, scientific information, agriculture, politics, and public reaction appeared side by side. English and Spanish were both strongly present, giving the discussion an international feel. A study based only on X/Twitter would likely describe El Niño as a rapid, multilingual topic closely linked to forecasts and news circulation.

YouTube brought out a more personal form of discussion, since the material came from comments under videos. People remembered previous El Niño years, worried about what might happen next, questioned dramatic media language, or used humor to deal with uncertainty. Reddit was more compact and strongly focused on weather concerns. TikTok comments were short, expressive, and often playful. Facebook included longer posts with a stronger media and news focus, while LinkedIn showed a more professional and informational discussion, often connected to science communication and education.

These differences describe what became visible in this study, during this particular moment, through the available public data. A comment below a video differs from a professional update. A short post during a forecast event differs from a long media post. A community discussion differs from a quick reaction on a short-video platform. The place where data is collected shapes the kind of conversation researchers can see.

Uncertainty, humor, and misinformation

The study also found differences in sentiment, language, text length, engagement, personal experience, humor, calls to action, and likely misinformation risk. Some misleading or questionable claims linked El Niño to artificial weather-making, treated it as simply another name for global warming, or turned a forecast expressed in probabilities into a certain disaster scenario. These examples show why interpretation needs to be done with care. The same online discussion can contain useful explanations, local memories, preparedness advice, jokes, doubts, exaggeration, and unsupported claims.

Climate information is often written in terms of probability, while people think in terms of possible consequences. They remember past floods, think about farms and food prices, worry about heat, or wonder whether they should prepare. Online platforms give these reactions different forms. Some make fast updates more visible. Some invite comments and jokes. Some bring professional explanation to the front. Some make local concerns easier to see.

Connecting the research to the Galicia case

The El Niño study complements another study by Erokhin and Komendantova titled, Assessing Climate Hazard Resilience Through AI-Based Analysis of Online Data: Empirical Evidence from Galicia, published in the journal Societies. This case study examined how online data could support resilience planning for several hazards within one region of Spain.

It combined Google Trends data with AI-supported analysis of YouTube comments about floods, wildfires, and heatwaves. It found that the hazards generated different kinds of public discussion. Wildfires were associated with anger, governance concerns, and low institutional trust. Flood discussions combined solidarity with demands for localized warnings and practical guidance. Heatwaves were more frequently normalized, downplayed, or treated with humor. The study translated these patterns into recommendations for more actionable risk communication, stronger early-warning and response systems, and trust-building practices.

Both studies show different sides of the same methodological challenge. The Galicia case asks how online signals can help understand climate resilience needs within a particular region. The El Niño study asks how the picture changes when researchers move between different social media platforms.

What this means for climate communication

For climate communication and social media research, the practical message is that platform choice shapes the findings. Claims about online climate discourse should say where the evidence came from, what kind of content was studied, and how far the conclusions can reasonably go. Communicators also need to recognize that the public around a climate event is made up of several audiences, each meeting the same information in a different setting.

El Niño became a forecast, a news item, a professional update, a worried comment, a memory, and a joke. Seeing these differences brings research closer to how people actually encounter climate information online.

Supporting systemic climate adaptation through SystR

Both studies were carried out as part of the Horizon Europe project, Accelerating Systemic Climate Adaptation Across Europe through Integrated Ecosystems of Resilience Solutions (SystR). SystR addresses systemic climate risks, that is, impacts that connect different sectors, institutions, and communities and can produce cascading consequences. The project brings together governance, community participation, financial planning, digital tools, and physical and nature-based adaptation solutions.

SystR works with six European regions and communities. Demonstration activities in Guadeloupe, the Bystrica region, and Rome are connected with replication activities in Galicia, Strasbourg, and Egaleo.

Note: This article gives the view of the authors, and not the position of the IIASA Insights blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.