By Andrew Curry , Science.  Excerpt: The Black Death is the single most deadly documented pandemic in human history. In 1347 C.E., it spread from a few Italian port cities to nearly every corner of Europe, killing tens of millions of people within a decade and eliminating more than half the continent’s population. In a paper published today in  Communications Earth & Environment , researchers argue that cool weather  spurred by previously unidentified volcanic eruptions  set into motion a deadly chain of events. ...The authors of the new paper suggest volcanic eruptions a few years before the plague’s rapid spread played a role, by pushing plumes of sulfur high into the atmosphere that cooled parts of Europe and caused harvests to fail around the Mediterranean. These failures, in turn, forced Italian cities to import large quantities of grain from the plague-wracked Black Sea region—along with infected fleas, capable of subsisting on grain dust in the cargo holds...

By  Erin Douglas ,  Inside Climate News .  Excerpt: This mosquito species is native to tropical and subtropical climates, but as climate change pushes up temperatures and warps precipitation patterns, the  Aedes aegypti   —  which can spread Zika, dengue, chikungunya and other potentially deadly viruses — is on the move. It’s popping up all over the Mountain West, where conditions have historically been far too harsh for it to survive. In the last decade, towns in  New Mexico  and  Utah  have begun catching  Aedes aegypti  in their traps year after year, and just this summer, one was found for the  first time in Idaho . ...as climate change allows the  Aedes aegypti  to move northward, survive at higher elevations and stay active for longer into the fall, dengue virus is fast emerging as one of the most dangerous of the world’s diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and  ticks , researchers say.......

By Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times. Excerpt: A mosquito-borne virus that can leave infected people debilitated for years is spreading to more regions of the world, as climate change creates new habitats for the insects that carry it. More than 240,000 cases of the virus, chikungunya, have been reported around the world so far this year, including 200,000 cases in Latin America  and 8,000 in China . ...Chikungunya is not circulating in the United States or Canada, but cases have been reported in France and Italy. The disease is endemic in Mexico. The World Health Organization is warning that current transmission patterns resemble a global outbreak that infected 500,000 people 20 years ago, contributing to a surge of new disabilities. Although it is rarely fatal, chikungunya causes excruciating and prolonged joint pain and weakness. “You have people who were working, with no disabilities, and from one day to the next, they cannot even type on a phone, they can’t hold a pen, a wo...

By Meredith Wadman , Science.  Excerpt: ...The disease [ Coccidioides fungus] causes ...Valley fever is familiar in the Southwest, where it has infected wildland firefighters; carrot, beet, and radish pickers; solar power farm builders; and cast and crew members on a Ventura County film set. ...the fungal spores, nourished in the warm, wet confines of the lung, morph into structures called spherules that burst to release boatloads of tiny endospores that become new spherules, continuing the cycle. Most of these people have a flulike illness lasting weeks or months. But 5% to 10% of cases result in lifelong lung infections, sometimes forcing people to be on powerful antifungal medications permanently. ...cases are escalating fast. Diagnoses ...have ballooned from  about 2800 annually  at the turn of the century to  about 20,000 in 2023 , with at least 200 people dying each year. Arizona and California, where roughly 97% of U.S. cases are reported, have seen dram...

By Stephanie Nolen  and Teddy Rosenbluth, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Federal health officials warned that the risk of contracting dengue in the United States has increased this year, a worrying sign as global cases of the mosquito-borne disease hit record numbers. In the first half of this year, countries in the Americas reported twice as many cases as were reported in all of 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday in an alert to health care providers. The region has seen nearly 10 million cases of the virus so far in 2024, most of which originated in outbreaks in South American countries like Brazil and Argentina. ...climate change is bringing the mosquito to new places, where it is flourishing. “Aedes mosquitoes thrive in warm and humid environments, so definitely climate change and rising temperatures and also extreme weather events are helping extend their habitat range,” said Dr. Gabriela Paz-Bailey, chief of the dengue branch at the...

By Michael B. Mahon et al, Nature.  Abstract: Anthropogenic change is contributing to the rise in emerging infectious diseases, which are significantly correlated with socioeconomic, environmental and ecological factors. Studies have shown that infectious disease risk is modified by changes to biodiversity, climate change, chemical pollution, landscape transformations and species introductions. However, it remains unclear which global change drivers most increase disease and under what contexts. Here we amassed a dataset from the literature that contains 2,938 observations of infectious disease responses to global change drivers across 1,497 host–parasite combinations, including plant, animal and human hosts. ...reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants o...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/health/malaria-climate-change.html By  Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times.  Excerpt: There were an estimated 249 million cases of malaria around the globe last year,  the World Health Organization said on Thursday , an increase of five million over 2021. Malaria remains a top killer of children. Those new cases were concentrated in just five countries: Pakistan, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and Papua-New Guinea. Climate change was a direct contributor in three of them, said Dr. Daniel Ngamije, who directs the W.H.O. malaria program. In July 2022, massive flooding left more than a third of Pakistan underwater and displaced 33 million people. An explosion of mosquitoes soon followed. The country reported 3.1 million confirmed cases of malaria that year, compared with 275,000 the year before, with a fivefold increase in the rate of transmission....

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-rains-pigs-and-waterbirds-fueled-shocking-disease-outbreak-australia By MEREDITH WADMAN , Science.  Excerpt: The appearance of a “tropical” mosquito-borne illness in southeastern Australia has unsettled researchers. ...McCann was the  fourth patient in as many weeks  admitted to Albury with encephalitis. Like McCann, the three others had turned up feverish and confused. ...among the possible causes were mosquito-borne viruses, in particular two encephalitis-causing viruses endemic to Australia: Kunjin, a strain of West Nile virus, and Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV), named for the river valley where McCann has swum, water skied, fished, and boated since he was a boy. ...As with other weather events, the record-breaking wetness of the 2021–22 season can’t be attributed with certainty to climate change. But as the globe warms, the atmosphere holds more water, enabling more intense rainfall and flooding; daily rainfall asso...

https://www.science.org/content/article/heat-and-disease-will-exact-heavy-toll-climate-warms Collection of articles in Science.  Excerpt: ...the stories in this special package will explore the threats, and how we can minimize them. Vector-borne diseases are a special worry . A warmer climate favors the mosquito that spreads dengue and may already be fueling a worldwide surge in the debilitating disease. Warming may also have enabled malaria-carrying mosquitoes to flourish in Africa’s cooler highlands and ticks that carry Lyme disease to advance northward. Migratory birds, which ferry cargoes of pathogens such as West Nile virus and influenza across continents, are changing the timing and routes of their journeys, with consequences that have yet to emerge. Then there are the direct effects of heat on the human body. The worsening toll of heat waves is unmistakable, with thousands dying every summer, but researchers are also discerning subtler impacts. Among the most vulnerable to ...

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adk4500 By TULIO DE OLIVEIRA  AND  HOURIIYAH TEGALLY , Science. Excerpt: While the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, another crisis continues to spiral at a much faster speed than was expected.  Climate change is dominating our lives and causing a high level of distress . Countries all over the world are struggling to survive the damage caused by extreme events. ...However, there is also a new threat that is being overlooked—the interaction between climate change and infectious diseases. A comprehensive meta-analysis revealed that climate change  could aggravate more than 50% of known human pathogens . Unfortunately, this is happening now. ...some people may think neither climate change nor epidemics are real or that both will pass. However, there is overwhelming  evidence that climate change is fueling disease outbreaks and epidemics  and that it is not a matter of if, but when, such event...

https://www.science.org/content/article/animal-melting-pot-created-climate-change-could-lead-new-disease-outbreaks By Jon Cohen, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: As habitats shift, many mammalian species will meet each other for the first time and swap viruses, modeling study predicts. Earth’s warming climate is expected to change the habitat of many animal species, which a new modeling study predicts may spell trouble: Species on the move will mingle with many others they have never encountered before, allowing the various animals to exchange viruses. That could spark new disease outbreaks in many wildlife populations—and in humans as well. By 2070, assuming the most conservative warming scenario, there will be at least 15,000 new cross-species transmissions involving more than 3000 mammalian species, according to a modeling team led by Colin Carlson, a global change biologist at Georgetown University. “Most of this pattern has probably been set in motion with the 1° of warming we’ve a...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/14/australia-japanese-encephalitis-climate-change/ By Frances Vinall , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Public health professionals say the appearance of Japanese encephalitis here is just the latest example of how global warming is  contributing to the spread  of disease. Six years ago, melting permafrost in Siberia  released frozen anthrax , which infected an Indigenous community. In 2007, the tropical  chikungunya virus  was detected in Europe  for the first time  in two Italian villages and has since appeared in France. In the United States, Lyme disease cases  have doubled  over 30 years as warmer conditions  create longer tick seasons . And in Australia, experts warn Japanese encephalitis could be the first of several illnesses to spread south. Tim Inglis is the head of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Western Australia. “With accelerating climate change, we’re ...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/10/climate/dengue-mosquito-spread-map.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich, The New York Times. Excerpt: Climate change is poised to increase the spread of dengue fever, which is common in parts of the world with warmer climates like Brazil and India, a new study warns. Worldwide each year, there are 100 million cases of dengue infections severe enough to cause symptoms, which may include fever, debilitating joint pain and internal bleeding. There are an estimated 10,000 deaths from dengue — also nicknamed breakbone fever — which is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes that also spread Zika and chikungunya. The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-019-0476-8 ], found a likelihood for significant expansion of dengue in the southeastern United States, coastal areas of China and Japan, as well as to inland regions of Australia....