Abstract:
Understanding the regional impact of future climate change is one of the major global challenges of this century. This study
investigated possible effects of climate change on malaria in West Africa in the near future (2006–2035) and the far future
(2036–2065) under two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), compared to an
observed evaluation period (1981–2010). Projected rainfall and temperature were obtained from the coordinated regional
downscaling experiment (CORDEX) simulations of the Rossby Centre Regional Atmospheric regional climate model
(RCA4). The malaria model used is the Liverpool malaria model (LMM), a dynamical malaria model driven by daily time
series of rainfall and temperature obtained from the CORDEX data. Our results highlight the unimodal shape of the malaria
prevalence distribution, and the seasonal malaria transmission contrast is closely linked to the latitudinal variation of the
rainfall. Projections showed that the mean annual malaria prevalence would decrease in both climatological periods under
both RCPs but with a larger magnitude of decreasing under the RCP8.5. We found that the mean malaria prevalence for the
reference period is greater than the projected prevalence for 6 of the 8 downscaled GCMs. The study enhances understanding
of how malaria is impacted under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios. These results indicate that the southern area of
West Africa is at most risk of epidemics, and the malaria control programs need extra effort and help to make the best use
of available resources by stakeholders.
