Time of Emergence and Future Projections of Extremes of Malaria Infections in Africa

Abstract

The spread of malaria is a major health burden, which affects many people in Africa, depends on climate but also socio-economic conditions. Thus, it is important to gauge the impact of anthropogenic global warming on malaria and attribute anthropogenic causes. Here we compute the Time Of Emergence of vector density and of the entomological inoculation rate (EIR) in the SSP3-7.0 scenario using 50 bias-corrected members of Community Earth System Model version 2 Large Ensemble simulations. This reveals that vector density, which depends on climate conditions, and EIR, which depends on both climate and population density, will rise significantly and permanently above the pre-industrial background variability due to anthropogenic causes in Africa. Both the vector density and EIR have areas, mainly in central Africa, where anthropogenic causes have already significantly changed, and many more areas will experience anthropogenic caused changes in the period 2030–2050 and toward the end of this century. Our simulations also show clear evidence that extremes of vector density and EIR increase in the future by almost 100%, suggesting that major malaria epidemic outbreaks will become much more likely. We also perform simulations with constant population and with no global warming which partly reveal underlying malaria dynamics. Our results highlight the need to prepare for an expansion and intensification of the malaria burden if no health interventions are being taken.