In our analysis, we count the existence of both incidence and onset of armed conflict events, while other aspects of armed conflict are not specified such as conflict intensity or consequences, conflict parties, historical context or other patterns of conflict which are considered in the literature.Īccording to UCDP-GED, more than 91,000 armed conflict events occurred globally between 20, which directly caused approximately 654,000 deaths, including nearly 144,000 civilians 4. This allows to measure the frequency of armed conflict events in terms of incidence (armed conflict event in a particular year) and onset (incidence without armed conflict event in previous year) in spatial and time units (see the equations in Supplementary Information). Among various conceptions of armed conflict most prominent is the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) georeferenced event dataset (GED) which defines an armed conflict event as “an incident where armed force was used by an organised actor against another organized actor, or against civilians, resulting in at least 1 direct death at a specific location and a specific date” 3. Our findings indicate that a better understanding of climate-conflict linkages at the global scale enhances the spatiotemporal modelling capacity for the risk of armed conflict.Īrmed conflict is the intervention of armed forces resulting from a disagreement over territory, policy and/or resources between two or more organized armed groups, governments or non-governments 1, 2. The inferred patterns show that positive temperature deviations or precipitation extremes are associated with increased risk of armed conflict worldwide. Our results reveal that the risk of armed conflict is primarily influenced by stable background contexts with complex patterns, followed by climate deviations related covariates.

Here we adopt a quantitative modelling framework based on machine learning to infer potential causal linkages from high-frequency time-series data and simulate the risk of armed conflict worldwide from 2000–2015. Although the relationship between climate variability and armed conflict has been studied by the research community for decades with quantitative and qualitative methods at different spatial and temporal scales, causal linkages at a global scale remain poorly understood.

Understanding the risk of armed conflict is essential for promoting peace.

Current events on armed conflict