Seeing a lot of hate tweets on your timeline today? It could be the weather.

• A new study finds that the number of hateful tweets increases when the temperature gets too hot or too cold.
• Researchers say there's a "feel-good" range where online anger levels off between 54-70 degrees Fahrenheit.

In recent years, the swell of online harassment and anger has been attributed to increased political polarization, bigotry, and income inequality.

Researchers have found another factor that may be to blame: the weather.

A new study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that people behave more aggressively online when the temperature exits a "feel-good" range and gets too hot or too cold.

Using AI, researchers analyzed more than 4 billion tweets posted in the US between 2014 and 2020 and overlaid them with historical climate data, concluding that extreme weather fuels mean tweets - especially extreme heat.

The findings were initially published in Medical Xpress, a medical and health news service.

According to the study, there is a sweet spot where aggressive micro-blogging levels off. "We see that outside the feel-good window of 12–21°C (54–70°F,) online hate increases up to 12% for colder temperatures and up to 22% for hotter temperatures across the US," Annika Stechemesser, a Potsdam Institute scientist and author of the study told Medical Xpress.

The researchers found that staying indoors on hot or cold days doesn't help curb mean tweets.

"Even in high-income areas where people can afford air condition[ing] and other heat mitigation options, we observe an increase in hate speech on extremely hot days. In other words: There is a limit to what people can take," Anders Leverman, another researcher at the Potsdam Institute, told the publication.

Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are constantly adapting to combat the plague of online harassment as angry and dangerous posting has gotten more organized. Last week, security firm Cloudflare dropped Kiwi Farms from its service after widespread reporting about the website's organized harassment campaigns that have reportedly been linked to three suicides.

The researchers at the Potsdam Institute conclude that their study may show how hotter temperatures can affect overall "societal cohesion and people's mental health."