Long-term trends of newspaper coverage on climate change and summer heat

Abstract

Online search systems of three newspapers in Japan were used to monitor long-term changes in the coverage of key words related to climate change and summer heat for the period 1984 to 2019. It was found that the coverage of “global warming” remained nearly constant except a distinct peak from 2007 to 2010, whereas that of “heat island” decreased markedly in the 2010s. The coverage of “heat stroke” rapidly increased after 2000, while that of “extreme hot day (moshobi)” did not show a remarkable increase since 2007, and “tropical night (nettaiya)” had a decreasing trend.