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Understanding and Modelling the Impact of Climate Change on Infectious Diseases – Progress and Future Challenges

The effects of global change on human health have attracted increasing attention in recent years, with anthropogenic influences thought to have significant influences on the Earth’s climate (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2007). Climate change is thought likely to have important effects on human, animal and plant life. In addition to indirect effects on human behaviour such as shifting migration patterns, direct effects of climate change on human health are potentially severe. Together with implications through changing air quality, increased exposure to UV radiation, changes in food production, increasing water shortages and contamination, and economic instability, climate change is widely expected to also significantly affect the global spread, intensity and distribution of infectious diseases (Hunter, 2003; McMichael et al., 2006). In this chapter, we review current knowledge on the impacts of global change on infectious diseases (Section 1), highlighting how combining global and regional climate models with mathematical (and statistical) models of disease transmission (Section 2) provides valuable tools for better understanding future disease scenarios as environmental conditions change. Such models may be used to address important questions on the current and projected impacts of climate change on disease transmission and we illustrate these issues (and the extent to which they have been addressed in modelling work to date) in Section 3. It should be remembered, however, that despite the power of weather, climate and disease models, considerable uncertainties remain. Identifying the origin of these uncertainties, highlighting where improved data may improve model accuracy, realism and confidence, together with translating uncertainties in model inputs into uncertainties in model outputs, are important benefits of modelling. Highlighting where key uncertainties lie is discussed in Section 4, illustrating where future research priorities may be directed to further our understanding of this emerging field.