10.21.2013

Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?

The "sister paper" to our recent Science article on climate and conflict has come out in Climatic Change. This new article is a traditional review article that walks readers through individual studies in the literature and discusses some of the debates in less technical terms than the Science article. The sample of studies included is slightly different since the submission timeline for the two studies was different.

Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?
Solomon Hsiang and Marshall Burke
Abstract: Are violent conflict and socio-political stability associated with changes in climatological variables? We examine 50 rigorous quantitative studies on this question and find consistent support for a causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes, at spatial scales ranging from individual buildings to the entire globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium. Multiple mechanisms that could explain this association have been proposed and are sometimes supported by findings, but the literature is currently unable to decisively exclude any proposed pathway. Several mechanisms likely contribute to the outcomes that we observe.