The El Ni帽o weather phenomenon, which influences the climate and economies in regions bordering the Pacific Ocean today, also caused famines in Europe between 1500 and 1800.
During El Ni帽o periods, ocean waters in the central and eastern Pacific become warmer, disrupting trade winds and leading to changes in rainfall patterns around the globe. When waters cool in the same area of the Pacific, it is called La Ni帽a, and these swings between warm and cool ocean phases are known as the El Ni帽o鈥揝outhern Oscillation (ENSO).
The phenomenon has severe impacts on tropical and subtropical regions 鈥� especially in Australasia, where it leads to drier weather and often brings droughts and bushfires, and the Americas, where precipitation increases, sometimes catastrophically.
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But until now, little scientific attention has been paid to its effect on Europe, say at Columbia University in New York City and his colleagues.
Esmaili鈥檚 team examined a dataset of 160 European famines during the early modern period in Europe, along with a record of El Ni帽o and La Ni帽a based on tree ring data.
More than 40 per cent of famine onsets in central Europe during this period were associated with El Ni帽o events, they found.
El Ni帽o tends to increase rainfall in this region, which may have led to excessive soil moisture and crop failures, the researchers say.
While El Ni帽o events didn鈥檛 directly lead to starvation elsewhere on the continent, they increased the annual likelihood that famines would persist by 24 per cent in all nine European regions the researchers studied.
To explain why, Esmaili and his colleagues also looked at grain and fish prices, finding that El Ni帽o events raised prices for a variety of foods across Europe for several years.
at the University of Sydney in Australia says the ENSO can still cause food insecurity and malnutrition today among low-income households in regions such as South and South-East Asia, Oceania and parts of Africa.
But while El Ni帽o events still also affect Europe鈥檚 climate, they would be unlikely to have such a severe impact on food security, he says.
鈥淭he same weather effect will have a very different outcome today. Crops are more resilient, production practices are much, much better, weather forecasting went from basically non-existent to pretty accurate and markets are integrated,鈥� says Ubilava.
EarthArXiv
