New research shows that many more lives have been lost due to torrential rains and fluctuating temperatures. Unusually bad weather can have a significant impact on deaths from both World War I and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, according to new research.
Through a detailed analysis of the ice core in the ice from the Swiss-Italian Alps, scientists took a closer look at the climatic patterns in Europe between 1914 and 1919, the first time they were involved in war and epidemics.
Unusually wet and cold conditions can help interfere with more people lost on the battlefield, as well as the migratory behavior of birds – they would be closer to each other than potentially pushing birds and people.
Alexander Moore, a climate scientist at Harvard University, said atmospheric circulation had changed and it had been colder across Europe for six years. “In this particular case, it was once in a 100-year discrepancy.”
“I’m not saying this was the ’cause’ of the epidemic, but it was certainly a potential, exacerbating factor in the already explosive situation.”
Of course, the accounts of the atrocities in the trenches of World War I are not new – rain and mud have been well documented. What this new research is doing is linking conditions to a century-old environmental model.
Traces of sea salt trapped in the main body of ice revealed abnormal Atlantic sea air currents and associated rainfall during the winters of 1915, 1916 and 1918 – combined with peaks in mortality on the European battlefield.
A total of 10 million military personnel are believed to have died in World War I. Problems such as skin inflammation from trek feet and frostbite would have been exacerbated by constant wetting conditions, while a battlefield bandage meant it was more difficult to recover and rescue wounded soldiers. Drowning, exposure and pneumonia cost more lives.
Archaeologist Christopher Lovelock says, “We found an increase between increasing humidity and cold conditions and the increase in mortality was particularly strong from mid-1917 to mid-1918. The University of Nottingham in the UK.
In addition to exacerbating bad conditions for soldiers, researchers suggest that climate anomalies could play a major role in creating the perfect environment for the H1N1 influenza strain to accelerate the second wave of the Spanish flu.
This part of the research is more speculative, but the study points to bad weather as one of the reasons for the primary reservoir of H1N1 – mal lord ducks – to be placed in Western Europe instead of the normal migration to Russia. This would have kept them close to the military and civilian populations struggling with uncomfortable situations.
Researchers have suggested that more water is absorbed into bird droppings due to the rapid spread of the virus, and that more viral strains of the flu are likely to spread to Europe, killing 6.6464 million people. With epidemics and climate anomalies once again plaguing the world today, there may be important lessons to be learned here.
Research has been published in Geo Health.
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