Journal
GEOHEALTH
Volume 4, Issue 9, Pages -Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2020GH000277
Keywords
Spanish Flu; World War I; Climate Change; >; Pandemic; Ice core
Funding
- Arcadia, a charitable foundation [AC3450, 3862, 4190]
- Arcadia Foundation under the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard [AC4190]
- Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine
- Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven
- Climate and Environmental Physics Institute, University of Bern
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The H1N1 Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 caused the highest known number of deaths recorded for a single pandemic in human history. Several theories have been offered to explain the virulence and spread of the disease, but the environmental context remains underexamined. In this study, we present a new environmental record from a European, Alpine ice core, showing a significant climate anomaly that affected the continent from 1914 to 1919. Incessant torrential rain and declining temperatures increased casualties in the battlefields of World War I (WWI), setting the stage for the spread of the pandemic at the end of the conflict. Multiple independent records of temperature, precipitation, and mortality corroborate these findings.
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