Benjamin Cash, George Mason University

Abstract

Climate change will expose new populations to diseases, by altering the range of temperature, precipitation, and other key meteorological variables, changing the areas in which the environment is suitable for these diseases to persist. However, this is a relatively slow process in comparison to the ability of diseases to jump between currently suitable environments via migration and travel. Cataloging, understanding, and ultimately predicting the movement of pathogens into naïve suitable environments in the current climate is necessary to anticipate and work to prevent the next crisis situation, and is the critical first step to understanding how disease risks will change in a changing climate.