11:15 AM - 11:30 AM
[AOS13-09] Tropical ocean-atmosphere link to infectious diseases
Keywords:ocean climate, El Nino, IOD, infectious diseases, early warning
Tropical oceans-atmosphere interactions give rise to several large-scale climate phenomena, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the ENSO Modoki, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the Atlantic Niño etc, which is turn cause extreme weather and climate events worldwide. Through the modulation of local processes, such as rainfall and temperature, these climate phenomena are shown to influence several types of infectious diseases, some of which are spreading to non-endemic seasons and regions because of global warming. For example, the rainfall and temperature variations associated with climate phenomena are linked to outbreaks of malaria, diarrhea and cholera in many parts of the world. This provides an opportunity to develop early warning systems for some of those infectious diseases based on slowly varying and mostly predictable climate phenomena. Some of the case studies related to those infectious diseases will be discussed. However, the climate link to some other diseases such as influenza and the COVID-19 is not so clear. The two major contributing factors to seasonal influenza peak are the changes in environmental parameters and human behavior including socio-economic-cultural factors, beyond the effect of climate. The latter seems to be playing a bigger role in the spread of COVD-19, which has not shown a clear seasonality in many parts of the world yet. So, the role of climate cannot be ruled out at this stage and it is important to take a transdisciplinary approach by involving researchers from fields of climate, environment, virology, health and social science to develop effective COVID-19 prediction models.