Climate change and infectious diseases

Climate change will alter the distribution and burden of infectious diseases. Anticipating future impacts requires characterizing how climate drivers alter transmission of vector-borne, waterborne and respiratory pathogens, accounting for nonlinear relationships between climate variables and disease outcomes. Here we show how inference from laboratory and observational studies in the present can be used to develop projections for the future impact of climate change on infectious disease, and to understand how climate change to date may have impacted existing disease trajectories. We synthesize data from multiple pathogens to show the broad implications of climate change for spatial and temporal outbreak patterns and predictability. One of the most immediate consequences of climate change may be to exacerbate the impact of weather extremes and climate variability, requiring novel data streams and modeling tools to tune interventions. At the same time, climate change is set to occur against the backdrop of demographic change; therefore, determining global shifts in vulnerability, both in the present and the future, is an important task for public health.