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Madeleine Thomson and Ashley Curtis

Linking Knowledge and Action to Reduce Risk in Climate related Disasters. Sponsored by GHI’s Thematic Working Group – Health in Crisis 14 th April 2011 Mailman School of Public Health. Madeleine Thomson and Ashley Curtis.

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Madeleine Thomson and Ashley Curtis

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  1. Linking Knowledge and Action to Reduce Risk in Climate related Disasters Sponsored by GHI’s Thematic Working Group – Health in Crisis14th April 2011 Mailman School of Public Health Madeleine Thomson and Ashley Curtis PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre on early warning systems for malaria and other climate sensitive diseases

  2. Hydro-meteorological disasters Includes: floods and wave surges, storms, droughts and related disasters (extreme temperatures and forest/scrub fires), and landslides & avalanches • What role does climate variability and change play in these disasters? • How can weather/climate information (at varying space-time scales) provide a resource for better disaster prevention and response?

  3. Example: observed rainfall variability and change in the Sahel 1900-2006 Climate varies on multiple time scales

  4. Weather and Climate information

  5. Seasonal to Interannual Climate A classic example is ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)

  6. Kenya: The impact of Floods and Droughts during ENSO years

  7. Catastrophic death-rates in North Eastern Kenya (Wajir) following 1997/8 El Niño In Catastrophic deaths, approximately 5% of the population, during the 1997–1998 epidemic (Fig. 2a) and 10 545 deaths in the Wajir province as a whole. Hay et al., 2001 Trends in Parasitology.

  8. Malaria in Botswana varies from year to year according to the climate and the temperature of the sea in the Nino 3.4 region

  9. El Niño and Disasters in Southern Africa Figure 1. Sum of country drought disaster years from EMDAT, with years following El Nino onset (El Nino year 2) shaded black. Thomson et al., 2003. Lancet. Drought 120% more likely in El Nino year. (Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe)

  10. El Niño: Catastrophe or OpportunityDilley and Goddard, 2005, Journal of Climate.El Niño: Catastrophe or Opportunity FIG. 2. (a). El Niño (thick red lines) and La Niña (thick blue lines) events, are indicated along axis. Solid green line represents time series of total disaster occurrence, detrended using a second-order polynomial (black dashed line).

  11. Disasters may not increase globally in ENSO years butpredictability of the climate does!

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