Global Climate Anomalies and Potential Infectious Disease Risks: 2014-2015

Conclusions Based on current global climate anomaly conditions and forecasts, El Niño is likely to develop during late 2014 and persist into early 2015. The expected effects on regional weather patterns include persistent high temperatures and drought in some areas, and heavy rainfall and flooding in others. This may enhance populations of particular vectors and the transmission of various infectious diseases in human and animal populations. Although local weather conditions mediate part of ENSO’s influence on infectious disease transmission (“teleconnections”), incorporating ENSO indicators into disease risk predictions offers advantages. ENSO forecasts typically can anticipate local weather effects several months before they manifest, providing lead-time for public health risk communication, enhancement of disease and vector surveillance programs, provisioning of clinical resources (for example, vaccines and diagnostics), and other preparedness measures. Also, a large-scale climate phenomenon such as ENSO may predict ecological processes better than weather-based models by integrating the effects of multiple weather variables that interact in complex ways53. Our El Niño-based infectious disease risk assessment for coming months requires some caveats. The development of El Niño events cannot be predicted with complete certainty. However, we expect predictability to be higher for this near-term forecast (versus, for example, a 1-year-ahead forecast). Predictability e...
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research