More on Weather and Civil Conflict
A study just out in Nature , coauthored by Soloman Hsaing , Kyle Meng and Mark Cane, finds El Nino events are correlated civil conflict. Sol is a recent Columbia PhD who has been working as a post doc on an NSF grant I have with Wolfram Schlenker and David Lobell. What makes the study interesting is that it documents a link between conflict and weather fluctuations that are predictable and larger-scale--a bit closer to climate change. That could be a lot different than documenting a links between conflict and localized acute weather events. The study is featured on the cover of Nature and is getting a ton of press coverage. Here's a nice summary at Time . Here's another at the Washington Post . I don't think anyone knows what to make of the correlation. The only mechanism that obviously comes to mind is food prices. But I've never played around with conflict data. And it's amazing how playing around with the data can change one's perspective