Over the past decade, increasing temperatures across much of Africa and decreasing rainfall across East Africa have come to represent an alarming climate trend. Chief among concerns is the impact such conditions have on human health.
Over the past decade, increasing temperatures across much of Africa and decreasing rainfall across East Africa have come to represent an alarming climate trend. Chief among concerns is the impact such conditions have on human health.
A team of scientists from UC Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazards Group (CHG), the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Early Warning and Environmental Monitoring Program are exploring potential links between these climate effects and two health outcome indicators: malnutrition and low birth weights. Their findings — some good news, some bad — appear in the journal Global Environmental Change.
Combining temperature and rainfall data from the CHG InfraRed Precipitation with Stations, a satellite-based rainfall monitoring network, with socioeconomic household-level data, the team modeled future scenarios of climate impacts on health outcomes in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Photo: Ethiopian farmers use oxen to prepare the fields for planting teff, used to make injera, a spongy bread that is a dietary staple.
Photo Credit: Kathryn Grace, University of Minnesota
