Malaria early warnings based on seasonal climate forecasts from multi-model ensembles

Botswana has compiled a continuous record of the incidence of malaria for the period 1982–2002, providing a unique data set for work on malaria epidemiology in a desert-fringe area. Climate fluctuations are known to be a major determinant of malaria transmission in parts of Africa where the disease is endemic. Based on established quantitative relationships between climate fluctuations and malaria incidence, a new system for predicting interannual climate fluctuations in epidemic-prone regions has now been developed. The DEMETER project, combining the leading European global climate prediction models, can successfully predict the probability of a malaria outbreak in Botswana up to five months ahead, providing an extra four months warning compared with current monitoring methods, during which time vital decisions about resource allocation can be made.