Weather, Volatility, and Society -- Coincidence?

The National Weather Service on Tuesday is expecting a ramping up of severe weather this week:

"Severe thunderstorms will be possible farther east as the week progresses due to a very unsettled weather pattern."

We have many times presented natural event outlooks based on social mood patterns.  This time we will present the same concept from the other side.  We have seen evidence over and over of a connection between weather, people, and events in general.  Given this weather forecast, watch for an increase in "unsettled" people.  If the pattern plays out as the Weather Service suspects, look for an increase in global stories about protests, riots, violence, market volatility, and natural events such as storms, earthquakes, and fires. 

Are we saying that the weather causes people's moods?  Are we saying people cause the weather?  Are we saying that U.S. weather causes global events?  Not exactly.  We are saying that there is a connection.  They are interdependent.  People and the events in the world are interdependent.  Let's watch this "very unsettled pattern" in our world this week and see how many faces it ends up displaying. 


For more information on the current outlook or the MoodCompass Project, see http://moodcompass.com.
You can also like The MoodCompass Project on .

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Update 6/13/2013:
Storm was not as bad as feared, so we would expect world news of this energy type to be unsettling, but not as destructive as it could have been. 

Headlines June 13-15, 2013:
Most destructive wildfire in Colorado's history
Dozens hurt in explosion at Louisiana chemical plant
1 dead, others hurt in new explosion in Louisiana
Turkey's protest situation critical
Stocks close out a volatile week
Thousands take to streets of Istanbul
Earthquake hits southern Mexico

Stopping Disaster

On June 2, we posted a warning of being in the Global Disaster Zone through June 10.  Then an amazing thing happened.  The following day, we moved out of the "zone."  Is that a coincidence?  Did the few hundred people who read the post respond in a way that a global disaster was prevented or delayed?  There's no way to know for sure whether a thing would have happened.  Today, the risk once again nears the critical zone.  Is there a way to stop or delay disaster?  Is it possible to repeat what happened after the June 2 post?

On the right side of the chart below, it can be seen that as of the 1st post, collective mood was just entering the "Global Disaster Zone," and then promptly left it as the blue line moved down the following day.  It began moving up again on Friday, June 7, which also meant an increasing risk of disaster type events.  While not large enough to be considered a disaster, a tragic event occurred, a mass shooting at Santa Monica College in California.  As of today, the disaster zone is getting quite near again.  What will happen this time?

For more information on the current outlook or the MoodCompass Project, see http://moodcompass.com.
You can also like The MoodCompass Project on .

Flooding Worries, but little Risk of Natural Disaster

In the Midwest, people have been watching rivers already at flood stage, threatened by rains yesterday and today.  There have been evacuations, and levees are being carefully watched for possible breaches.

For the past few days, natural disaster risk has not risen, it has been dropping.  Just a week ago, U.S. damage risk was at "serious" levels and global risk at "disaster." Yet, at this point, it would be highly unlikely for a serious natural disaster to occur within the U.S. and there is only a very small chance that one would happen anywhere in the world. 

Just a reminder, we are not out of the woods for human-caused disasters.  There could still be another big one in the next few days.

For more information on the current outlook or the MoodCompass Project, see http://moodcompass.com.

You can also like The MoodCompass Project on .

Natural Disasters' Relationship to Social Mood: How we chart it

In a recent conversation with a university dept. head, it was expressed that the meteorology dept. was concerned about possible catastrophic tornadoes in the early spring this year in the Midwest.  We were able to tell him that while we were watching for the next big U.S. disaster in the early spring, that the risk of it being a natural disaster was low.  However, close to April 9 there would be a greater risk for a natural event.  As it turned out, those big storms that blew across the U.S. (Walda) were the most powerful on April 8-10. Yet, we told him this before Walda even had a name.  How was this possible?

 

We get social mood from Google Hot Trends.  This tells us where people are at.  We also measure the mood reflected in current events via top U.S. news stories, and its relation to social mood.  Before a disaster occurs, of any sort, there is a process that we have found always occurs.  Basically, where people are at and where the news is at reaches a maximum divergence, then a process begins that brings it all back together.  Disasters, whether natural or human caused are a primary means of things getting in sync again.  We can't talk about why without getting into metaphysical supposition. Yet, we have a method that makes this process repeatable, observable and quantifiable. 

The above chart is derived from the relationship of entropy and its opposite phimation,*  and their divergence between social mood and the news.  We quantify this in the way we categorize the social mood data that we gather. When entropy in the news  (vs. where people are at) is sufficient and then phimation surpasses it, that means a natural disaster is likely. In the  above chart, the light yellow range (45-55%) will likely not do much damage in the U.S., but may manifest in serious natural event damage elsewhere (e.g. the recent Iran earthquake).  In the middle orange range (55-70%), there will likely be some serious damage, but it won’t be seen as a national “disaster” (e.g. Walda); also it may manifest as a natural disaster outside of the U.S.. The top red range (>70%) indicates events that will be experienced as natural disasters in the U.S. are almost certain; risk for major natural disasters elsewhere would also be very high. 

This is all based on a recent breakthrough we had on the nature of disasters in late February, which has given us so much more to work with. Hope that helps to clarify our approach and the connection between disasters and social mood.  For more on this recent breakthrough, check out the presentation: Disaster: Society's Shadow.

 

For more information on the current outlook or the MoodCompass Project, see http://moodcompass.com.

You can also like The MoodCompass Project on .


* Phimation as the self-organizing principle or force opposing entropy in complex systems was first used by Robert Prechter.