Dataset Information

Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 'slowdown' in global warming.

ABSTRACT: A counterargument to the importance of climate change for malaria transmission has been that regions where an effect of warmer temperatures is expected, have experienced a marked decrease in seasonal epidemic size since the turn of the new century. This decline has been observed in the densely populated highlands of East Africa at the center of the earlier debate on causes of the pronounced increase in epidemic size from the 1970s to the 1990s. The turnaround of the incidence trend around 2000 is documented here with an extensive temporal record for malaria cases for both Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax in an Ethiopian highland. With statistical analyses and a process-based transmission model, we show that this decline was driven by the transient slowdown in global warming and associated changes in climate variability, especially ENSO. Decadal changes in temperature and concurrent climate variability facilitated rather than opposed the effect of interventions.

SUBMITTER: Rodo X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7946882 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 'slowdown' in global warming.

Rodó Xavier X Martinez Pamela P PP Siraj Amir A Pascual Mercedes M

Nature communications 20210310 1

A counterargument to the importance of climate change for malaria transmission has been that regions where an effect of warmer temperatures is expected, have experienced a marked decrease in seasonal epidemic size since the turn of the new century. This decline has been observed in the densely populated highlands of East Africa at the center of the earlier debate on causes of the pronounced increase in epidemic size from the 1970s to the 1990s. The turnaround of the incidence trend around 2000 i ...[more]

PMID: 33692343

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Project description:Although recent global warming trends in air temperature are not as pronounced as those observed only one decade ago, global mean temperature is still at a very high level. Does plant phenology - which is believed to be a suitable indicator of climate change - respond in a similar way, that is, does it still mirror recent temperature variations? We explored in detail long-term flowering onset dates of snowdrop, cherry, and lime tree and relevant spring temperatures at three sites in Germany (1901-2012) using the Bayesian multiple change-point approach. We investigated whether mean spring temperature changes were amplified or slowed down in the past decade and how plant phenology responded to the most recent temperature changes. Incorporating records with different end points (i.e., 2002 and 2012), we compared differences in trends and inferred possible differences caused by extrapolating phenological and meteorological data. The new multiple-change point approach is characterized by an enhanced structure and greater flexibility compared to the one change point model. However, the highest model probabilities for phenological (meteorological) records were still obtained for the one change point (linear) model. Marked warming trends in the recent decade were only revealed for mean temperatures of March to May, here better described with one or two change point models. In the majority of cases analyzed, changes in temperatures were well mirrored by phenological changes. However, temperatures in March to May were linked to less strongly advancing onset dates for lime tree flowering during the period 1901-2012, pointing to the likely influence of photoperiodic constraints or unfulfilled chilling requirements. Due to the slowdown of temperature increase, analyses conducted on records ending in 2002 demonstrated distinct differences when compared with records ending in 2012. Extrapolation of trends could therefore (along with the choice of the statistical method) lead to distinctly different results and most recent data should be integrated in order not to over- or underestimate future phenological changes.

Dataset Information

Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 'slowdown' in global warming.

Publications

Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 'slowdown' in global warming.

Similar Datasets

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