Solar Geoengineering Could Redistribute Malaria Risk in Developing Countries
Carlson CJ, Colwell R, Hossain MS, Rahman MM, Robock A, Ryan SJ, et al. Nat Commun. 2022;13: 2150.
Geoengineering is often framed as a tool for climate justice. Our study challenges that idea, showing that solar geoengineering would create regional tradeoffs and potentially increases in malaria risk worldwide.
Our study is the first to project the impacts of solar geoengineering - an emergency intervention to reduce the effects of global warming, in theory particularly for vulnerable frontline populations - on an infectious disease. We focus on malaria, which doesn’t increase linearly with temperature (i.e., warmer isn’t necessarily more malaria; cooler isn’t necessarily less).
In any scenario, geoengineering will probably shift malaria risk around continents, creating regional trade-offs in health outcomes within the Global South. But in the kind of extreme warming scenario where geoengineering might be most appealing, we find that deploying geoengineering would increase (or rather, reverse a decline of) malaria population at risk by roughly a billion people.
Details and a link to the publication are available here.
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New Paper Summarizes the Ecological & Societal Impacts of Mangrove Expansion Driven by Climate Change |
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In response to warming winters, mangroves have been expanding and displacing salt marshes at varying degrees of severity in parts of north Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. A paper led by Michael Osland (USGS) with contributions from 21 coauthors including Mike Allen (NCBS) and Joe Marchionno (UF ESSIE PhD student) reviews the current understanding of impacts of mangrove range expansion on wetland ecosystem services.
The paper summarizes the important implications of mangrove expansion given climate change.
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Red Tide Blooms Occur Naturally in the Gulf of Mexico, but Human Activity Can Make Them Worse Once They Reach Florida's Coast
New research published in Science of the Total Environment led by research scientist Dr. Miles Medina links red tide blooms near Charlotte Harbor to nitrogen-enriched flows from the Caloosahatchee River, Lake Okeechobee, and upstream areas. "Our study is the first to find evidence of what many have long suspected--that nitrogen inputs from the watershed make red tides more intense and make them last longer," said Dr. Medina.
The results indicate that human activity has consistently played a role in red tide intensification during the past decade, suggesting that we can reduce the severity, duration, and impacts of red tides through management of land-based nutrients and discharges.
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If you have any climate-related research, news items, or events that you would like to submit for consideration in the next newsletter, please email them to info@floridaclimateinstitute.org
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National, International, and Remote
Program Officer, National Academy of Medicine Climate Grand Challenge | Washington, DC
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Enríquez, A. R., Wahl, T., Baranes, H. E., Talke, S. A., Orton, P. M., Booth, J. F., et al. (2022). Predictable Changes in Extreme Sea Levels and Coastal Flood Risk Due To LongTerm Tidal Cycles. JGR Oceans, 127(4).
Muthukrishnan, R., Hayes, K., Bartowitz, K., Cattau, M. E., Harvey, B. J., Lin, Y., et al. (2022). Harnessing NEON to evaluate ecological tipping points: Opportunities, challenges, and approaches. Ecosphere, 13(3).
Snoussi, H., Askri, H., Nacouzi, D., Ouerghui, I., Ananga, A., Najar, A., et al. (2022). Comparative Transcriptome Profiling of Salinity-Induced Genes in Citrus Rootstocks with Contrasted Salt Tolerance. Agriculture.
Sun, S., Tai, A. P. K., Yung, D. H. Y., Wong, A. Y. H., Ducker, J. A., & Holmes, C. D. (2022). Influence of plant ecophysiology on ozone dry deposition: comparing between multiplicative and photosynthesis-based dry deposition schemes and their responses to rising CO level. Biogeosciences, 19, 1753–1776.
Zhang, C., Wu, S., Li, T., Yu, Z., & Bian, J. (2022). Interpreting the Trends of Extreme Precipitation in Florida through Pressure Change. Remote Sensing, 14(6). |
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About Us
The Florida Climate Institute (FCI) is a multi-disciplinary network of national and international research and public organizations, scientists, and individuals concerned with achieving a better understanding of climate variability and change.
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