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