One in five major civil conflicts since 1950 may be linked to climate extremes associated with El Ni±os — periods of warming lasting a year or longer in surface waters of the central equatorial Pacific, a new study finds.
Solomon Hsiang of Princeton University and his coauthors at Columbia University emphasize that they don’t know what mechanism might link El Niños to eruptions of major civil unrest, which they define as disputes between governments and other organized parties that claim at least 25 lives.
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