By 2070 climate change will cause thousands of new viruses to spread among animal species and this is likely to increase the risk of emerging infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans.
A new study published in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature said this is especially true for Africa and Asia that have been the hot spots for deadly disease spread from humans to animals or vice versa over the last several decades, including flu, HIV, Ebola and the coronavirus.
The researchers used a model to examine how over 3,000 mammal species might migrate and share viruses over the next 50 years if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius which recent research shows is possible.
They found that cross-species virus spread will happen over 4,000 times among mammals alone. Birds and marine animals were not included in the study.
The findings reveal that though not all viruses will spread to humans or become pandemics of the scale of the coronavirus but the number of cross-species viruses increases the risk of spread to humans.
Previous research has looked at how deforestation and extinction and wildlife trade lead to animal-human disease spread, but there’s less research about how climate change could influence this type of disease transmission the researchers said at a media briefing.
The researchers said, “Our findings highlight an urgent need to pair viral surveillance and discovery efforts with biodiversity surveys tracking species’ range shifts, especially in tropical regions that harbour the most zoonoses and are experiencing rapid warming.” M