Weather, salience of climate change and congressional voting

•We study weather, Google searches for climate change and congressional voting.•Climate-related searches increase with extreme temperatures and lack of snow.•Unusual weather in a members home state is correlated with pro-environment voting.•We do find a relationship for non-environment votes or ones unrelated to pollution.•The relationship is strongest for moderate Democrats and member of the House.

Climate change is a complex long-run phenomenon. The speed and severity with which it is occurring is difficult to observe, complicating the formation of beliefs for individuals. We use Google search intensity data as a proxy for the salience of climate change and examine how search patterns vary with unusual local weather. We find that searches for “climate change” and “global warming” increase with extreme temperatures and unusual lack of snow. Furthermore, we demonstrate that effects of abnormal weather extend beyond search behavior to observable action on environmental issues. We examine the voting records of members of the U.S. Congress from 2004 to 2011 and find that members are more likely to take a pro-environment stance on votes when their home state experiences unusual weather.