Up until now most research has focused on public beliefs about anthropogenic climate change or, in other words, on whether the public accepts the scientific consensus that climate change is happening. However, a key aspect on public opinion still remains unresolved: are attitudes towards climate change and climate change beliefs more acute in places more affected by the rise in sea level, the change in temperatures or the occurrences of climate disasters? Do people react to the change in climate or, as some argue, the climate changes are so minimal in the short-run that are not perceived by the population? This article studies public opinion on climate change and on climate policies as a function of objective changes in temperature, floods, fire or hurricane occurrence. We use data coming from the module ‘Public Attitudes to Climate Change’ from the European Social Survey in 2016 (44,387 respondents from 23 countries), as well as from the Prudence project, which includes the evolution of several climate indicators at a very fine-grained level of geographical aggregation. Linking the regional variation of climate change phenomena and public opinion at NUTS-2 level, we are able to explore not only whether changes in the environment make people more likely to believe on climate change, but also its impact on people’s support on policy measures to tackle it.