All Climate Events

Tuesday, May 10, 2021. 2:45 PM. Webinar: Estimating Vector-borne Disease Transmission in a Human-modified World. Courtney Murdock, Cornell University. Sponsored by Cornell University. More information here.

Climate change will alter the distribution and intensity of transmission of vector-borne diseases, potentially increasing the probability of disease emergence and threatening the fragile gains current control programs have made in combatting these diseases. Approximately 400,000 deaths occurred due to malaria in 2018 alone, despite intense effort to control transmission over the past two decades. Additionally, currently half of the world's population is at risk for contracting mosquito-transmitted viruses, with 390 million dengue infections per year. Further, many diseases that have recently emerged or are re-emerging globally are mosquito-borne. It has been well established that temperature has non-linear effects on vector-borne disease transmission. Thus, the effects of climate change on disease transmission will likely differ across regions. This seminar will explore the mechanisms that generate complex effects of
temperature on mosquito-borne disease in the malaria and arbovirus systems and will discuss implications for transmission of these diseases in a changing climate.