Several studies have linked high temperatures to increases in violent conflicts. The findings are controversial, however, as there has been no systematic cross-sectional analysis performed to demonstrate the generality of the proposed relationship. Moreover, the timescale of temperature/violence relationships have not been fully investigated; it is unclear how short versus long-term, or seasonal and inter-annual temperature variability contribute to the likelihood or frequency of violent events. We here perform systematic regional and grid-based longitudinal analyses in Africa and the Middle East for the period 1990–2017, using geolocated information on armed conflicts and a recently released satellite-based gridded temperature data set. We find seasonal synchrony between temperature and number of armed conflicts at the regional scale (climatic region), as well as a positive relationship in temperature and conflict anomalies on inter-annual timescales at the grid cell level (for the entire African and ME region). After controlling for ‘location effects’, we do not find that long-term warming has affected armed conflicts for the last three decades. However, the effects of temperature anomalies are stronger in warmer places (~5% increase per 10 °C, P < 0.05), suggesting that populations living in warmer places are more sensitive to temperature deviations. Taken together, these findings imply that projected warming and increasing temperature variability may enhance violence in these regions, though the mechanisms of the relationships still need to be exposed.

几项研究将高温与暴力冲突的增加联系起来。但是，由于没有进行系统的横截面分析来证明所建议关系的普遍性，因此该发现存在争议。此外，温度/暴力关系的时间尺度尚未得到充分研究。目前尚不清楚短期与长期，季节和年度间的温度变化如何导致暴力事件的可能性或发生频率。我们在这里使用关于武装冲突的地理位置信息和最近发布的基于卫星的栅格化温度数据集，对非洲和中东在1990–2017年期间进行了系统的区域和基于网格的纵向分析。我们发现温度和区域规模（气候区域）武装冲突数量之间的季节性同步，以及温度和冲突异常在网格单元级别（对于整个非洲和中东地区）的年际时标上呈正相关关系。在控制了“位置效应”之后，我们发现在过去的三十年中，长期变暖并未影响武装冲突。但是，温度异常的影响在温暖的地方更为强烈（每10°C升高5％，P  <0.05），这表明生活在较温暖地方的人口对温度偏差更敏感。综上所述，这些发现暗示，尽管这些关系的机理仍需揭露，但预计的变暖和温度波动性可能会加剧这些地区的暴力行为。