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Abstract Malaria is one of the major health threats in Africa, and the risk of transmission is projected to be exacerbated by global warming. Rwanda experienced an 11-fold increase in malaria incidence from 2011 to 2015 despite extensive funding and implementation of control measures. Here, we focus on Rwanda as a case study and simulate monthly malaria incidence between 2010 and 2015, employing an ensemble learning method. Next, we project future malaria prevalence using shared socio-economic pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5). We find that the projected increases in temperature and precipitation may shift malaria transmission risk to the highlands of western and northern Rwanda. These two regions that currently experience low malaria transmission. The seasonal effects of malaria incidence may be less apparent from January to June, and the peak season for malaria transmission in the highlands could occur one month earlier. Our findings highlight the impacts of climate change on malaria epidemics in Rwanda, which have implications for other world regions.

Abstract In Maritime Continent, the shift of intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) location directly regulates the distribution of black carbon and hence affects public health in the region, but the mechanism and human health impacts have not yet been comprehensively revealed. Here we used multiple reanalysis datasets to investigate the long-term shift of seasonal-mean zonal-mean ITCZ location in this region from 1980 to 2014, and to assess the influences on black carbon distribution and the resultant health impact in terms of premature mortality. Results show that recent human-related equatorial warming contributed to an equatorward shift (∼2.1°) of ITCZ location in Maritime Continent. Spatially, the equatorward shift of ITCZ reduced surface black carbon concentration over the maritime area by enhancing updrafts and wet deposition, but raised the concentration in the continental area by inhibiting updrafts. Meanwhile, anomalous low-level northeasterlies weakened summer circulation and prevented black carbon from being transported to the Philippines. Our results also suggest that the equatorward shift decreased ∼13% of black carbon-associated monthly premature mortality in maritime countries, but increased ∼6% of that in continental countries based on the population and mortality rate in 2010. We therefore recommend considering climate change impacts in the design of adaptation strategies against regional air pollution.

Abstract Background A pertinent risk factor of upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) and pneumonia is the exposure to major ambient air pollutants, with short term exposures to different air pollutants being shown to exacerbate several respiratory conditions. Methods Here, using disease surveillance data comprising of reported disease case counts at the province level, high frequency ambient air pollutant and climate data in Thailand, we delineated the association between ambient air pollution and URTI/Pneumonia burden in Thailand from 2000 – 2022. We developed mixed-data sampling methods and estimation strategies to account for the high frequency nature of ambient air pollutant concentration data. This was used to evaluate the effects past concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) and the number of disease case count, after controlling for the confounding meteorological and disease factors. Results Across provinces, we found that past increases in CO, SO2, and PM2.5 concentration were associated to changes in URTI and pneumonia case counts, but the direction of their association mixed. The contributive burden of past ambient air pollutants on contemporaneous disease burden was also found to be larger than meteorological factors, and comparable to that of disease related factors. Conclusions By developing a novel statistical methodology, we prevented subjective variable selection and discretization bias to detect associations, and provided a robust estimate on the effect of ambient air pollutants on URTI and pneumonia burden over a large spatial scale.

This research employs China’s steel restriction policy as a backdrop to investigate environmental policies’ unintended and counterproductive effects. Using high-resolution satellite-derived data and panel Difference-in-Differences regression, we found that the air pollution concentration in cities implementing the steel restriction policy is 5.688 μ g/m ^3 higher than in control group cities. Additionally, the growth rate of air pollution in these cities is 6.577% faster. This quantitative evidence substantiates the backfire effect of the anticipation of environmental policy, where the delay between a policy’s announcement and its enforcement leads to a short-term surge in pollution levels. For China and other emerging economies, the development of a thorough and deliberate intergovernmental cooperation strategy is critical when formulating environmental policies. It involves synchronizing the efforts of different government levels in applying pollution controls and diminishing the interval of potential intense pollution in the pre-implementation phase.

Lifecycle analysis is a tool widely used to evaluate the climate impact of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the production and use of biofuels. In this paper we employ an augmented lifecycle framework that includes climate impacts from changes in surface albedo due to land use change. We consider eleven land-use change scenarios for the cultivation of biomass for middle distillate fuel production, and compare our results to previous estimates of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for the same set of land-use change scenarios in terms of CO _2 e per unit of fuel energy. We find that two of the land-use change scenarios considered demonstrate a warming effect due to changes in surface albedo, compared to conventional fuel, the largest of which is for replacement of desert land with salicornia cultivation. This corresponds to 222 gCO _2 e/MJ, equivalent to 3890% and 247% of the lifecycle GHG emissions of fuels derived from salicornia and crude oil, respectively. Nine of the land-use change scenarios considered demonstrate a cooling effect, the largest of which is for the replacement of tropical rainforests with soybean cultivation. This corresponds to − 161 gCO _2 e/MJ, or − 28% and − 178% of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of fuels derived from soybean and crude oil, respectively. These results indicate that changes in surface albedo have the potential to dominate the climate impact of biofuels, and we conclude that accounting for changes in surface albedo is necessary for a complete assessment of the aggregate climate impacts of biofuel production and use.