Africa's malaria map is already shifting due to climate change ->Earth.com | More info at BigEarthData.ai | #Malaria #ClimateChange
Africa's malaria map is already shifting due to climate change
For a quarter century, researchers and public health officials have debated exactly how climate change is reshaping malaria’s spread. A new study finally resolves that debate with the most comprehensive assessment yet, and the answer turns out to be more nuanced than a simple worse-or-better verdict. The research quantifies climate change’s historical and future impact on malaria across sub-Saharan Africa’s children, where the vast majority of cases and deaths occur. Overall, the study has found that climate change has slightly increased malaria to date. But looking ahead, that overall trend hides a sharp geographic divide. Rising temperatures could increase malaria risk in southern and East Africa while reducing it in today’s hardest-hit regions, where conditions may become too hot for mosquitoes to survive. A disease on the move “Climate change isn’t just making malaria worse or better – it’s moving it,” said co-author Tamma Carleton, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Whether a place sees elevated malaria risks or reduced burdens under climate change depends on how hot it is today. We see relief in the current hotspots and new risk nearly everywhere else.” Thus, climate change isn’t applying uniform pressure across the continent. It’s redrawing the...
earth.com
