Abstract
Continental-scale models of malaria climate suitability typically couple well-established temperature-response models with basic estimates of vector habitat availability using rainfall as a proxy. Here we show that across continental Africa, the estimated geographic range of climatic suitability for malaria transmission is more sensitive to the precipitation threshold than the thermal response curve applied. To address this problem we use downscaled daily climate predictions from seven GCMs to run a continental-scale hydrological model for a process-based representation of mosquito breeding habitat availability. A more complex pattern of malaria suitability emerges as water is routed through drainage networks and river corridors serve as year-round transmission foci. The estimated hydro-climatically suitable area for stable malaria transmission is smaller than previous models suggest and shows only a very small increase in state-of-the-art future climate scenarios. However, bigger geographical shifts are observed than with most rainfall threshold models and the pattern of that shift is very different when using a hydrological model to estimate surface water availability for vector breeding.
Highlights
Continental-scale models of malaria climate suitability typically couple well-established temperature-response models with basic estimates of vector habitat availability using rainfall as a proxy
Detailed dynamic process-based models coupling hydrological and biological components of malaria transmission have been developed at the village-scale[13,14], such hydrological representations are lacking in existing malaria climatic suitability estimates at the continental scale
We demonstrate the sensitivity of present and future estimates of hydro-climatic suitability to the representation of water body availability and show that the application of a hydrological model to make these estimates produces a more realistic, though more complex pattern of malaria transmission that has considerable implications for present estimates and future predictions of populations in stable and unstable malaria transmission zones
Summary
Continental-scale models of malaria climate suitability typically couple well-established temperature-response models with basic estimates of vector habitat availability using rainfall as a proxy. We show that across continental Africa, the estimated geographic range of climatic suitability for malaria transmission is more sensitive to the precipitation threshold than the thermal response curve applied. To address this problem we use downscaled daily climate predictions from seven GCMs to run a continental-scale hydrological model for a process-based representation of mosquito breeding habitat availability. We demonstrate the sensitivity of present and future estimates of hydro-climatic suitability to the representation of water body availability and show that the application of a hydrological model to make these estimates produces a more realistic, though more complex pattern of malaria transmission that has considerable implications for present estimates and future predictions of populations in stable and unstable malaria transmission zones
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