This project investigates emotional responses to climate extremes, policies, scientific assessments, media reports, and art work in order to describe the emergence of climate emotions across societies. It starts from the observation that the established focus on scientific knowledge and its communication is too narrow to fully explain whether and how such knowledge is accepted, rejected, or translated into climate action. Building on recent research, the project therefore conceptualizes the construction of climate futures as inherently shaped by emotional dynamics.

While existing studies on phenomena such as climate anxiety or climate grief predominantly focus on individual experiences, this project approaches emotional responses as socially constructed and embedded. Emotions are formed within public and policy debates, within social groups, and through interaction and contestation between groups. Against this background, the project asks: How do social groups respond emotionally to climate change and how do these climate emotions enable or constrain the realization of desired climate futures? To explore this, we ask three questions.

 How do different actors respond emotionally?
Lead: Michael Schnegg / Simone Rödder

To address this, we examine how diverse actors – lay people, indigenous communities, scientists, social movements, and policymakers – respond emotionally to climate change across selected Global South and Global North countries. It employs ethnographic case studies in order to identify commonalities and differences in emotional repertoires.

How are affectivities shared?
Lead: Frank Steinicke / Michael Brüggemann / Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw

Based on this qualitative approach, we develop a framework for the long-term monitoring of climate emotions based on the large-scale, automated analysis of textual, audio, and video data from media, social networks, and websites. It focuses on processes of emotional contagion, co-production, and contestation, supported by AI-based methods that capture emotional valence and arousal.

How do climate emotions enable and constrain action?
Lead: Michael Schnegg / Simone Rödder / Frank Steinicke

We furthermore investigate how climate emotions enable or constrain climate action by shaping individual and collective capacities to act. This research employs immersive experiments, longitudinal studies, and cases analyses to examine how emotional dynamics influence engagement, mobilization, and decision-making in contexts such as climate negations, activism, and public debates.

To integrate our results across cases, actor groups, and regions, we develop a theoretically guided comparative approach. We also link our findings to the broader synthesis and knowledge exchange activities of CLICCS II in order to identify general patterns in the formation of climate emotions and to assess their implications for climate action and the realization of desirable climate futures.