Prolonged drought and associated social unrest on the Tibetan Plateau played a role in the emergence and spread of the Third Plague Pandemic

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dc.creatorTang, Wanru
dc.creatorFang, Keyan
dc.creatorZhou, Feifei
dc.creatorBüntgen, Ulf
dc.creatorChen, Deliang
dc.creatorMei, Zepeng
dc.creatorWu, Hao
dc.creatorLi, Jiaxi
dc.creatorSeppä, Heikki
dc.creatorLin, Shuheng
dc.creatorLi, Jinbao
dc.creatorBuckley, Brendan
dc.creatorCamarero, J Julio
dc.creatorChen, Fahu
dc.date2026-06-22T14:59:00Z
dc.date2026-04-21
dc.date2025-08-03
dc.date2026-06-22T14:59:00Z
dc.date.accessioned2026-08-03T02:05:06Z
dc.descriptionAcknowledgements: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42588201, 42425101) and Fujian Institute for Cross-Straits Integrated Development (LARH24JBO7).
dc.descriptionPublication status: Published
dc.descriptionFunder: Fujian Institute for Cross-Straits Integrated Development (LARH24JBO7)
dc.descriptionThe Third Plague Pandemic claimed over 15 million lives, making it one of history’s deadliest. However, the complex interplay of environmental and societal factors that triggered the spillover of Yersinia pestis from its natural reservoirs on the Tibetan Plateau into human populations in the 1850s remains unclear. Here, we use 35 moisture-sensitive tree-ring chronologies from the southeastern Tibetan Plateau to reconstruct interannual to multi-decadal hydroclimate variability back to 1564 CE. Our record reveals a prolonged drought from the 1850s to the 1880s, coinciding with the onset and establishment of the Third Plague Pandemic. The reconstructed hydroclimate anomaly was accompanied by sharp increases in famine, conflict and plague that claimed 2.41 million lives during the Panthay Rebellion. Troops, refugees, and opium traders accelerated the spread of the pandemic to and from Hong Kong. Our findings underline the need for plague prevention based on climate-related conflict in a warming, globalized world.
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dc.identifier2662-4435
dc.identifiers43247-026-03526-8
dc.identifier3526
dc.identifierhttps://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/405170
dc.identifier2662-4435
dc.identifier.urihttps://repo.dare.co.zw/handle/123456789/163391
dc.languageen
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.publisherhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03526-8
dc.subject37 Earth Sciences
dc.subject4101 Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation
dc.subject41 Environmental Sciences
dc.subjectInfectious Diseases
dc.subjectVector-Borne Diseases
dc.subject13 Climate Action
dc.titleProlonged drought and associated social unrest on the Tibetan Plateau played a role in the emergence and spread of the Third Plague Pandemic
dc.typeArticle

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