Climate change has magnified the threats associated with more than half of all known human pathogenic diseases, according to a study published Aug. 8 in Nature Climate Change.
Researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in Honolulu analyzed 3,213 peer-reviewed case studies about infectious diseases affected by 10 climate hazards, such as heatwaves, wildfires and rising sea levels.
Climate hazards have aggravated 218 pathogenic diseases, representing 58 percent of all infectious diseases known to have affected humanity in recorded history. Researchers noted the difficulty of quantifying climate change's effect on infectious diseases and said this figure is likely an underestimate.
They also identified more than 1,000 unique pathways in which climate hazards lead to disease transmission and new infectious disease cases.
"The sheer number of pathogenic diseases and transmission pathways aggravated by climatic hazards reveals the magnitude of the human health threat posed by climate change and the urgent need for aggressive actions to mitigate [greenhouse gas] emissions," researchers said.
Read the full study here.