Volume 476 Issue 7361, 25 August 2011
Historians and scientists have long theorized that the global climate and global patterns of violence might be connected, but this idea has never been directly tested with data. Now a new analysis examines whether civil conflicts might be linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the dominant mode of interannual variability in the modern global climate. Using data on tropical countries collected between 1950 and 2004, the study finds that the probability of new civil conflicts breaking out in El Niño years is double that seen in cooler La Niña years. Overall, these findings suggest that the ENSO may have played a part in initiating 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950. This study represents the first demonstration that the stability of modern societies is associated with the global climate. The cover image shows the number of months per year, with blue equal to zero and red equal to twelve, that surface temperatures warm in response to El Niño. The warming of the tropics is caused by an atmospheric Kelvin wave generated in the Pacific Ocean and trapped near the Equator by Earths rotation. Cover image: Solomon M. Hsiang.
Editorial
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