Could Climate Have Worsened WWI and the 1918 Flu Pandemic?

Scientists have been saying for years that climate change will have effects on our health and could even be the cause of disease outbreaks or pandemics. Now researchers have proposed that a 'climate anomaly' could have worsened conditions in Europe during World War I, where the weather was unusually cold and wet for several years. Changes in migratory bird patterns may also have caused or contributed to the 1918 flu pandemic.  

“The data presented here show that extreme weather anomalies captured in [ice cores] and reanalysis records brought unusually strong influxes of cold marine air from the North Atlantic, primarily between 1915 and 1919, resulting in unusually strong precipitation events, and that they exacerbated total mortality across Europe,” wrote the authors in the paper.

This kind of climate anomaly, they said, happens about once a century. That it happened during the biggest war humanity had seen up until that point, while also coinciding with some of the war’s biggest battles, is unbelievably bad timing.

It’s also possible that this awful weather ushered in the pandemic, the authors argue. The excess precipitation, along with cold ocean air hanging over the Western Front, may have altered the migratory patterns of mallard ducks. This is significant because mallard ducks are “the primary reservoir [source] for the H1N1 avian influenza virus,” according to the study.