Global warming could make people sick.
Warmer temperatures could make it easier for disease to spread, Voice of America reported.
Researchers looked at a year's worth of data in hopes of discovering what trends went hand-in-hand with climate change.
"One of the big themes that has emerged is that there's a lot of diseases, especially in natural systems, where there as a pretty clear signal that either the prevalence or severity of those diseases has increased in response to climate change," Sonia Altizer, a professor at the University of Georgia's Odum School of Ecology, said.
This was observed in the Arctic and in relatively warm oceans.
"So in the arctic there are parasitic worms that affect muskox and reindeer, for example, that are developing faster and becoming more prevalent and expanding their ranges. And then in tropical oceans, like Caribbean coral reefs, there's a large amount of evidence that has mounted that shows that warming interferes with the symbiosis of corals - makes them more vulnerable to disease and at the same time increases the growth rate of some lethal bacteria," Altizer said.
Some countries will be better-prepared to deal with outbreaks than others.
"Surveillance, vector control, modern sanitation, drugs, vaccines can be deployed to prevent outbreaks of a lot of diseases, especially vector borne disease or diarrheal disease that are much more problematic in the developing world. And so these can counter the effects of climate change and make it hard to detect increases in those pathogens," Altizer, said.
Malaria and dengue fever-infected mosquitos and ticks will pose some of the larger threats.
Alitzer believes predicting the affect of climate change on disease will be a complicated task.
"I think that the answer to it really depends on the location. So where, when and what pathogen? So I think we're at a stage now where in the next five to ten years scientists will be able to move towards a predictive framework that will be able to answer questions about where in the world and what pathogens are responding and will continue to respond most strongly to climate change," she said.
