Previous research that reported the linkage between climate change and plague activity primarily refers to the immediate effect of short-term climatic variation. Yet, decades of discussion about the climate-plague ass...Previous research that reported the linkage between climate change and plague activity primarily refers to the immediate effect of short-term climatic variation. Yet, decades of discussion about the climate-plague association cannot determine the precise role of climate in shaping plague dynamics. One reason for this discrepancy originates from the narrow selection of spatio-temporal settings for comprehensive analysis of the correlation, leading to a limited consideration of the complexity of possible dynamics.By analyzing a 414-year long record of plague outbreak in pre-industrial Europe and the corresponding climatic data in multi-scale,we find little evidence to support climate-plague correlation in(1) both climatic variations and large-scale climatic phenomena,(2)both country scale and continental scale,(3) annual to inter-annual scale, and(4) both linear and non-linear analytic approaches. The null-result should not be viewed as a general rejection of other recent findings related to climate-plague association; nevertheless,it suggests that a wider consideration of scales, sensitivity checks and consideration of contexts should be included in explaining and predicting plague transmission under contemporary global climate conditions.展开更多
基金supported by the Hui Oi-Chow Trust Fund (Grant Nos. 201502172003 & 201602172006)Research Grants Council of The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (Grant Nos. HKU745113H & 17610715)
文摘Previous research that reported the linkage between climate change and plague activity primarily refers to the immediate effect of short-term climatic variation. Yet, decades of discussion about the climate-plague association cannot determine the precise role of climate in shaping plague dynamics. One reason for this discrepancy originates from the narrow selection of spatio-temporal settings for comprehensive analysis of the correlation, leading to a limited consideration of the complexity of possible dynamics.By analyzing a 414-year long record of plague outbreak in pre-industrial Europe and the corresponding climatic data in multi-scale,we find little evidence to support climate-plague correlation in(1) both climatic variations and large-scale climatic phenomena,(2)both country scale and continental scale,(3) annual to inter-annual scale, and(4) both linear and non-linear analytic approaches. The null-result should not be viewed as a general rejection of other recent findings related to climate-plague association; nevertheless,it suggests that a wider consideration of scales, sensitivity checks and consideration of contexts should be included in explaining and predicting plague transmission under contemporary global climate conditions.
