Scientists predict thousands of new virus transmissions from bats due to climate change | Climate news
Scientists expect there will be 15,000 virus transmissions between different species by 2070, mainly due to bats moving to new areas in a hotter world.
A warmer climate than ever before will drive more animals to new locations, bringing with them parasites and pathogens, and “increases the risk of emerging infectious diseases from animals to humans in the next 50 years,” scientists forecast.
As they move, some species will come into contact with each other for the first time. But the danger would be greatest in densely populated areas, such as with humans in tropical Africa and Southeast Asia.
The journal Nature, which publishes the peer-reviewed study, believes it is one of the first to assess how global changes could create “future hotspots” for virus sharing and emerging diseases.
The researchers, led by Colin Carlson from Georgetown University, modeled how mammals might move when the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius by 2070, as their current habitat becomes more should be too hot.
They predict there will be at least 15,000 transmissions of the new virus between species, mainly by bats, which often carry viruses that are highly transmissible to humans.
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that there is a possibility of a new coronavirus outbreak in 2020 in Wuhan transmitted from a bat to humans through an intermediate species.
Scientists and governments around the world agree that the world should find ways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, to avoid the worst of climate deterioration – although some impact will still occur. But current policies, if implemented, will set the world on the right track warm up about 1.9 degrees.
The main goal of last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow was to “keep 1.5 alive” by calling on countries to review and strengthen their climate action plans with the conference. next summit, COP27 in Egypt in November this year.
Before the Paris climate agreement was agreed at COP21 in 2014, the world was on the verge of warming by nearly 4 degrees.
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