Abstract
The Paris Climate Agreement aims to hold global-mean temperature well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Whilst it is recognized that there are benefits for human health in limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the magnitude with which those societal benefits will be accrued remains unquantified. Crucial to public health preparedness and response is the understanding and quantification of such impacts at different levels of warming. Using dengue in Latin America as a study case, a climatedriven dengue generalized additive mixed model was developed to predict global warming impacts using five different global circulation models, all scaled to represent multiple global-mean temperature assumptions. We show that policies to limit global warming to 2°C could reduce dengue cases by about 2.8 (0.8–7.4) million cases per year by the end of the century compared with a no-policy scenario that warms by 3.7°C. Limiting warming further to 1.5°C, produces an additional drop in cases of about 0.5 (0.2–1.1) million per year. Furthermore, we found that by limiting global warming we can limit the expansion of the disease towards areas where incidence is currently low. We anticipate our study to be a starting point for more comprehensive studies incorporating socioeconomic scenarios and how they may further impact dengue incidence. Our results demonstrate that although future climate change may amplify dengue transmission in the region, impacts may be avoided by constraining the level of warming.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 6243-6248 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
Volume | 115 |
Issue number | 24 |
Early online date | 29 May 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Jun 2018 |
Keywords
- climate change impacts
- disease modelling
- latin america
- Dengue fever
Profiles
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Paul Hunter
- Norwich Medical School - Professor in Medicine
- Population Health - Member
- Water Security Research Centre - Member
- Epidemiology and Public Health - Member
- ClimateUEA - Member
Person: Research Group Member, Research Centre Member, Academic, Teaching & Research
-
Iain Lake
- School of Environmental Sciences - Professor
- Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research - Member
- Environmental Social Sciences - Member
- ClimateUEA - Member
Person: Research Group Member, Academic, Teaching & Research
-
Timothy Osborn
- School of Environmental Sciences - Professor of Climate Science
- Water Security Research Centre - Member
- Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences - Member
- Climatic Research Unit - Member
- ClimateUEA - Member
Person: Research Group Member, Research Centre Member, Academic, Teaching & Research