Effect of temperature on the spread of contagious diseases : evidence from over 2000 years of data

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Authors

Balcilar, Mehmet
Mukherjee, Zinnia
Gupta, Rangan
Das, Sonali

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

MDPI

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in interest among scholars and public health professionals in identifying the predictors of health shocks and their transmission in the population. With temperature increases becoming a persistent climate stress, our aim is to evaluate how temperature specifically impacts the incidences of contagious disease. Using annual data from 1 AD to 2021 AD on the incidence of contagious disease and temperature anomalies, we apply both parametric and nonparametric modelling techniques and provide estimates of the contemporaneous, as well as lagged, effects of temperature anomalies on the spread of contagious diseases. A nonhomogeneous hidden Markov model is then applied to estimate the time-varying transition probabilities between hidden states where the transition probabilities are governed by covariates. For all empirical specifications, we find consistent evidence that temperature anomalies have a statistically significant effect on the incidence of a contagious disease in any given year covered in the sample period. The best fit model further indicates that the contemporaneous effect of a temperature anomaly on the response variable is the strongest. As temperature predictions continue to become more accurate, our results indicate that such information can be used to implement effective public health responses to limit the spread of contagious diseases. These findings further have implications for designing cost effective infectious disease control policies for different regions of the world.

Description

This article forms part of a special issue titled 'Climate Impact on Human Health'.
DATA AVAILABITY STATEMENT: Data for contagious diseases are publicly available from https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemics#cite_note-38, https://www.worldhistory. org/article/1532/plagues-of-the-near-east-562-1486-ce/, and https://listfist.com/list-of-epidemicscompared-to-coronavirus-COVID-19. Data for temperature anomaly is publicly available from https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2020/2019-years/ and https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/ monitoring/global-temperature-anomalies (accessed on 18 July 2023).

Keywords

Temperature anomaly, Contagious disease, General additive model, Nonhomogeneous hidden Markov model, Climate change, Public health, SDG-03: Good health and well-being, SDG-13: Climate action

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG-03:Good heatlh and well-being
SDG-13:Climate action

Citation

Balcilar, M.; Mukherjee, Z.; Gupta, R.; Das, S. Effect of Temperature on the Spread of Contagious Diseases: Evidence from over 2000 Years of Data. Climate 2024, 12, 225. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli12120225.