A rchive Date
[ 22-06-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Ecology ]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1464054

Global warming hastens spread of disease, scientists suggest

Los Angeles Times

June 20, 2002, 10:59PM

A wide-ranging survey of world ecosystems shows that warmer temperatures have sparked a host of epidemics in plants and animals, suggesting global warming could ravage the planet's ecology and accelerate disease in a number of species - including our own.

The study cites a litany of species - oysters, oaks, monarch butterflies and colorful Hawaiian forest birds called honeycreepers - that have succumbed in recent years to new or more virulent disease outbreaks resulting from even small increases in temperature.

Although many deaths were related to short-term temperature spikes from phenomena such as El Niño, scientists said the findings bolster theories that long-term global warming could usher in similar devastation - and on a much broader scale.

"It's not only going to be a warmer world, it's going to be a sicker world," said Andrew Dobson, an epidemiologist at Princeton University and co-author of the report published in today's issue of Science.

Almost everywhere the authors looked - on land and sea, in tropical climes and temperate ones - they found examples of plants and animals falling prey to disease as temperatures rose.

"When you see the same pattern across so many organisms, you need to start taking the climate signal seriously," said Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. "We don't want to be alarmist, but we are alarmed."

The link between global warming and disease has been controversial since it was first proposed in 1991. Many critics argue that such concerns are overblown since a connection has yet to be firmly established. The problem has proved to be maddeningly difficult to analyze because of the multitude of factors, such as pollution and habitat destruction, that play major roles in the spread of disease.

The authors chronicle a variety of ways that warmer temperatures could fuel the severity and proliferation of disease. Warm nights and shorter winters allow the fungus that causes Dutch elm disease to thrive. Higher temperatures have allowed malaria-carrying mosquitoes to invade higher elevations, leading to more malaria deaths in mountain-dwelling Hawaiian songbirds. Ligurian Sea sponges that suffer heat stress in warmer waters are more vulnerable to fatal infection.

World Fact Book

(CIA

)

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