Nonlinear effect of climate on plague during the third pandemic in China.

ABSTRACT: Over the years, plague has caused a large number of deaths worldwide and subsequently changed history, not the least during the period of the Black Death. Of the three plague pandemics, the third is believed to have originated in China. Using the spatial and temporal human plague records in China from 1850 to 1964, we investigated the association of human plague intensity (plague cases per year) with proxy data on climate condition (specifically an index for dryness/wetness). Our modeling analysis demonstrates that the responses of plague intensity to dry/wet conditions were different in northern and southern China. In northern China, plague intensity generally increased when wetness increased, for both the current and the previous year, except for low intensity during extremely wet condit

SUBMITTER: Xu L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3121851 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature