London, Aug 25 (ANI): A new study has found a natural global climate cycle associated to periodic increases in warfare.
The arrival of El Nino, which every three to seven years boosts temperatures and cuts rainfall, doubles the risk of civil wars across 90 affected tropical countries, and may help account for a fifth of worldwide conflicts during the past half-century, says an interdisciplinary team at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
The study does not blame specific wars on El Nino, nor does it directly address the issue of long-term climate change.
However, it raises potent questions, as many scientists think natural weather cycles will become more extreme with warming climate, and some suggest ongoing chaos in places like Somalia are already being stoked by warming climate.
"The most important thing is that this looks at modern times, and it's done on a global scale," said Solomon M. Hsiang, the study's lead author, a graduate of the Earth Institute's Ph.D. in sustainable development.
"We can speculate that a long-ago Egyptian dynasty was overthrown during a drought. That's a specific time and place, that may be very different from today, so people might say, 'OK, we're immune to that now.'
"This study shows a systematic pattern of global climate affecting conflict, and shows it right now," he stated.
The cycle known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a periodic warming and cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean.
This affects weather patterns across much of Africa, the Mideast, India, southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas, where half the world's people live.
During the cool, or La Nina, phase, rain may be relatively plentiful in tropical areas; during the warmer El Nino, land temperatures rise, and rainfall declines in most affected places.
The scientists tracked ENSO from 1950 to 2004 and correlated it with onsets of civil conflicts that killed more than 25 people in a given year.
The data included 175 countries and 234 conflicts, over half of which each caused more than 1,000 battle-related deaths.
For nations whose weather is controlled by ENSO, they found that during La Nina, the chance of civil war breaking out was about 3 percent; during El Nino, the chance doubled, to 6 percent.
Countries not affected by the cycle remained at 2 percent no matter what.
Overall, the team calculated that El Nino may have played a role in 21 percent of civil wars worldwide-and nearly 30 percent in those countries affected by El Nino.
The study appeared in the current issue of the leading scientific journal Nature. (ANI)
|
|
Comments:
