ArticleNature communications2021
ENSO impacts child undernutrition in the global tropics.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- High ambient temperature effects on the anthropometric status of the population: A systematic review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2026Pooled it
- Associations between El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and tuberculosis incidence in China: a nationwide study.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Article
- ENSO amplifies global vegetation resilience variability in a changing climate.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Eliminating hunger in a world serious about climate mitigation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Assessment of heatwave impacts on child feeding practices across 36 low-income and middle-income countries: a cross-sectional analysis.The Lancet. Planetary health · 2025Article
- Prevalence and trends of coexisting forms of malnutrition and its associated factors among children aged 6-59 months in South and Southeast Asia, 1996-2022: a cross-sectional time series study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Future climate response to observed strong El Niño analogues.NPJ climate and atmospheric science · 2025Article
- El Niño southern oscillation, weather patterns, and bacillary dysentery in the Yangtze River Basin, China.Global health research and policy · 2024Article
- The association between crop diversity and children's dietary diversity: multi-scalar and cross-national comparisons.Food security · 2024Article
- Maternal preconceptional and prenatal exposure to El Niño Southern Oscillation levels and child mortality: a multi-country study.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Annals of Education: Teaching Climate Change and Global Public Health.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Nonlinear El Niño impacts on the global economy under climate change.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis: A Strategy for Mitigating the Impacts of Climate Change on Tropical Legume Crops.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The Childhood Origins of Climate-Induced Mobility and Immobility.Population and development review · 2022Article
- The Effect of Prenatal Exposure to Climate Anomaly on Adulthood Cognitive Function and Job Reputation.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- ENSO impacts child undernutrition in the global tropics.Nature communications · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a principal component of global climate variability known to influence a host of social and economic outcomes, but its systematic effects on human health remain poorly understood. We estimate ENSO's association with child nutrition at global scale by combining variation in ENSO intensity from 1986-2018 with children's height and weight from 186 surveys conducted in 51 teleconnected countries, containing 48% of the world's under-5 population. Warmer El Niño conditions predict worse child undernutrition in most of the developing world, but better outcomes in the small number of areas where precipitation is positively affected by warmer ENSO. ENSO's contemporaneous effects on child weight loss are detectable years later as decreases in height. This relationship looks similar at both global and regional scale, and has not appreciably weakened over the last four decades. Results imply that almost 6 million additional children were underweight during the 2015 El Niño compared to a counterfactual of neutral ENSO conditions in 2015. This demonstrates a pathway through which human well-being remains subject to predictable climatic processes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.