The research, detailed in this week's issue of the journal Science, synthesizes findings scattered across diverse fields ranging from archaeology to economics to paint a clearer picture of how global warming-related shifts in temperature and rainfall could fuel acts of aggression.

Though scientists don't know exactly why global warming increases violence, the findings suggest that it's another major fallout of human-made climate change, in addition to rising sea levels and increased heat waves.

"This study shows that the value of reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions is actually higher than we previously thought," said study first author Solomon Hsiang, an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey. (Related: "Global Warming Making People More Aggressive?")

To perform their analysis, Hsiang and