Study: Climate affects global conflict

El Niño weather conditions cause torrential downpours and crop-killing droughts in the United States, but a study released today theorizes that this hot-climate cycle can contribute to far deadlier outcomes in parts of the developing world.

The study, published in the journal Nature, said the probability that civil wars will break out in 90 tropical countries such as Myanmar and Colombia doubles in years when the El Niño Southern Oscillation warms the climate, compared with cooler La Niña years.

"We can speculate that a long-ago Egyptian dynasty was overthrown during a drought. That's a specific time and place . . . so people might say, 'OK, we're immune to that now,' " said Solomon Hsiang, the study's lead author. "This study shows a systematic pattern of global climate affecting conflict and shows it right now."

El Niño Southern Oscillations occur every four to seven years when powerful trade winds in the Pacific push colder water down and move warmer surface water atop it.

The cool winds weaken, making the water even warmer. The hotter climate produces heavy rain in some areas and droughts in others. Agriculture, the main source of income in tropical nations, is ruined.

Authors of the study stopped short of claiming that El Niño can ignite wars, asserting instead that it can be a major contributing factor, along with economic strife and competing political and religious ideologies.

Hsiang compared his team's findings to the first studies tying cigarettes to cancer, which prompting more studies. His researchers studied 175 nations and 234 civil wars. Ninety of those nations were in the tropical zone affected by El Niño.

-- The Washington Post