Evaluating the Impact of Climate Change on Global HPAI H5N1 outbreaks

Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses H5N1 have spread throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa in the past decade, raising serious worldwide concerns about a potential new pandemic. Many studies have investigated the spread of the HPAI H5N1 virus and discussed its possible risk factors. However, the climate factor, which can affect the whole process of H5N1 outbreaks, has been greatly ignored. The objective of this preliminary study is to use a GIS-based approach to explore the potential impacts of temperature change on H5N1 outbreaks. We have divided the outbreaks into five epidemic waves. Although the temperature ranges of different epidemic waves are overlapped, the season period of different waves are varied, indicating that temperature may play an important role in the timing of outbreaks. Current measures might successfully control the epidemic strength of H5N1 outbreaks, but they did not change its epidemic cycles. The risk of H5N1 outbreaks reflected from the spatial viewpoint is still very high, and long-term efficient control strategies on H5N1 outbreaks should be explored for sustainable effects.