ACCLIMATISE: Attribution of a Changing CLIMate in the AssessmenT of malaria Intervention Strategy Efficiency

Recent significant investments in malaria interventions have reduced malaria burden.

Contemporaneously, the climate has continued to warm with associated changes in rainfall and weather extremes, which compound year to year and decadal climate variability. Together these impact malaria transmission through the climate sensitivity of the parasite and its mosquito vector. Hence, climate change can either enhance or offset the impact of malaria interventions.

Conversely, interventions can be optimised to mitigate the effects of climate, for instance to prevent outbreaks at higher altitudes. Ignoring the confounding effects of climate can result in the impact of interventions being over or underestimated.

Equally, neglecting the impact of interventions would render attribution of malaria outbreaks to anthropogenic climate inaccurate.

ACCLIMATISE will combine modelling and observations to differentiate the climate signal from that of interventions and other environmental and socioeconomic changes, so that a cost-benefit analysis can fairly assess the efficiency of interventions.

We use counterfactual simulations to attribute anthropogenic climate change in malaria trends in endemic settings, as well as extremes in highland areas and the monsoon fringe with a range of intervention scenarios.

An AI-emulator will be co-designed with stakeholders to assess efficient intervention strategies in the present and near future to 2050.