A Global Analysis of Temperature, Terrorist Attacks, and Fatalities

Higher temperatures have been associated with aggression in humans, but the heat–aggression relationship has not been clearly established for terrorist attacks. We found significant and positive relationships when regressing the number of terrorist attacks and associated deaths on temperature in 159 countries from 1970 to 2015. When temperature increases, the number of terrorist attacks and deaths due to terrorist attacks tend to increase. Our results are consistent with a large body of research on the effect of climate on conflict and are of practical concern given increasing average global temperatures.