Geoengineering will increase the risk of malaria for a billion people

This is the first assessment of how climate geoengineering could affect the spread of infectious diseases.

The authors of the new work focused onsolar radiation management (SRM). If we can reduce its impact, it will slow down climate change. One proposal is to inject aerosols into the stratosphere that reflect sunlight. Managing solar radiation is often discussed as a way to slow climate change, but researchers have not previously studied how it might affect human health.

A team of eight researchers from the United StatesStates, Bangladesh, South Africa and Germany used climate models to understand how malaria transmission would occur in two different scenarios. The first is at average rates of global warming, the second is at high rates. And also with and without geoengineering. The authors determined which temperatures are most favorable for the insects that carry malaria, as well as approximately how many people live in areas where infections are most common.

As a result, it turned out that if the rate of warming of the Earth is high and at the same time geoengineering is used, then the number of people who have a chance of getting malaria will increase by a billion.

Christopher Trisos, PhD and Sr.researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, in 2018 put forward a hypothesis. According to it, malaria transmission peaks at 25°C. Cooling the tropics through geoengineering could eventually increase the risk of malaria spreading elsewhere.

The potential of geoengineering to reduce the risks associated with climate change is still poorly understood. This could lead to a number of new risks for people and ecosystems.

Christopher Trisos, PhD and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town in South Africa

In both scenarios, the authors found thatgeoengineering could significantly reduce the risk of malaria in the Indian subcontinent. But this protective effect will be offset by the fact that the risk of getting sick will increase in Southeast Asia.

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