El Niño: current science & implications for global health
El Niño 2015/2016: current science and implications for global health
El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climate phenomenon that originates in the Pacific but has wide-ranging effects, being particularly associated with droughts and floods. ENSO is known to affect many global health issues. At the global scale, the impact of natural disasters increases during El Niño. The effect of ENSO on the risk of malaria epidemics has also been well established in parts of South Asia and South America. Health planners are used to dealing with spatial risk concepts but there is a lack of experience with temporal risk management. ENSO and seasonal climate forecasts offer the opportunity to target scarce resources for epidemic control and disaster preparedness.
An El Niño of surprising intensity developed in 2015-16, affecting patterns of weather variability worldwide. The event rivalled the 1997-98 El Niño, the strongest on record, in its magnitude and impacts. The first presentation will describe the evolution of the event, how well it was predicted, and how it influenced weather around the globe. The second presentation will describe the relationship between El Niño and malaria at local and global scales.
Speakers:
Michael J. McPhaden is a Senior Scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington. His research focuses on large-scale tropical ocean dynamics, ocean-atmosphere interactions, and the ocean’s role in climate. Over the past 35 years he has been involved in developing ocean observing systems for climate research and forecasting, most notably the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) moored buoy array in the Pacific for studies of El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/).
Menno Bouma is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who has been researching the relationships between climate and malaria for over 20 years.
Chair: Sari Kovats, Director, Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change, and Senior Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Admission