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Scientists have established the relationship between climate change and the frequency of civil wars
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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By statistical analysis, American scientists have established the relationship between the El Niño cycles and the frequency of civil wars "in many tropical countries," writes The Independent, citing a publication in Nature. According to the authors of the study, they "managed to show for the first time that the stability of the modern community depends heavily on the global climate." This means that "the world may still have more troubled times."
El Niño - the periodic increase in water temperature in the tropical latitudes of the eastern Pacific - every 3-7 years leads to warming and droughts in Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, North and South America. The opposite phase, characterized by cooling and precipitation of increased precipitation in these areas, is called La Niña. Together they constitute the so-called Southern Oscillation.
Specialists from Columbia University (New York) compared statistics on this phenomenon with the history of clashes that occurred in the tropics from 1950 to 2004. The sample included 175 countries and 234 conflicts. It turned out that during the La Niña period, the probability of civil war here was about 3%, and with El Niño - 6%. In countries not subject to South Oscillation, this indicator stably kept around 2%. As the authors of the publication emphasize, it is incorrect to consider that wars begin because of the weather alone. However, they believe that the climatic factor could play a role in 21% of civil wars that have occurred in the last half a century all over the world. The correlation mechanism remains unclear.
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