El Nino Found to Drive Tropical Civil Wars
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - 12:31
in Earth & Climate
In 1957, civil war broke out in then Burma (now Myanmar) and Oman. In 1965, similar conflicts erupted in Burundi, Chad, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia and Peru. In 1997, the Comoros, Congo, Eritrea, Niger and Rwanda also saw battles over national power that each killed more than 25 people. What do all these years and countries have in common? First, they are all tropical countries, strongly affected by the weather pattern known as El Niño , a warming of equatorial waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean that occurs cyclically every three to seven years and generally makes the climate hotter and drier throughout the tropics. Secondly, these were all years in which the global climate was enduring an El Niño. [More]