Abstract
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important mode of climatic variability that exerts a discernible impact on ecosystems and society through alterations in climate patterns. For this reason, ENSO has attracted much interest in the climate and health science community, with many analysts investigating ENSO health links through considering the degree of dependency of the incidence of a range of climate diseases on the occurrence of El Niño events. Because of the mounting interest in the relationship between ENSO as a major mode of climatic variability and health, this paper presents an overview of the basic characteristics of the ENSO phenomenon and its climate impacts, discusses the use of ENSO indices in climate and health research, and outlines the present understanding of ENSO health associations. Also touched upon are ENSO-based seasonal health forecasting and the possible impacts of climate change on ENSO and the implications this holds for future assessments of ENSO health associations. The review concludes that there is still some way to go before a thorough understanding of the association between ENSO and health is achieved, with a need to move beyond analyses undertaken through a purely statistical lens, with due acknowledgement that ENSO is a complex non-canonical phenomenon, and that simple ENSO health associations should not be expected.
Highlights
Through a cascade of processes that link variability in the ocean-atmosphere system and the surface environment, weather and climate can have a discernible impact on health
Because strong El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-related climate anomalies have discernible impacts on health in some regions and because ENSO generally accounts for the largest proportion of the inter-annual variation in climate [8], especially in regions where health systems are less resilient to “climate shocks”, the purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the basic characteristics of the ENSO phenomenon and its climate impacts, discuss the use of ENSO indices in climate and health research and outline our present understanding of ENSO health associations
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important of mode of climatic variability that exerts a discernible impact on ecosystems and society
Summary
Through a cascade of processes that link variability in the ocean-atmosphere system and the surface environment, weather and climate can have a discernible impact on health. Such impacts may be direct, indirect, or diffuse [1], and occur over a range of temporal and spatial scales [2]. The climate variability and health literature is generally concerned with establishing the impact on health of variations in weather conditions at intra-seasonal, inter-annual, and inter-decadal time periods. Climatic variability is connected with variations in the state of the atmospheric and ocean circulation and land surface properties (e.g., soil moisture) at the intra-seasonal to inter-decadal timescales. ENSO-based seasonal health forecasting, and the possible impacts of climate change on ENSO, and the implications this holds for future assessments of ENSO health associations, will be briefly discussed
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