More than half of known human diseases are aggravated by climate change new research has found, prompting researchers to issue a warning to Australia.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change today, linked 286 unique, human pathogenic diseases to ten climate hazards: droughts, fires floods, heatwaves, natural cover change, ocean climate change, precipitation, sea levels, storms and warming.
It found the hazards aggravated 58 per cent of human infectious diseases.
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Erik Franklin, study co-author and associate research professor at University of Hawaii, said the study names at least two diseases, which pose a threat to Australians.
"Our review found evidence wildfires, drought, and deforestation are contributing to occurrences of Hendra virus," he told 9News.com.au, referring to an often fatal virus carried by bats and horses.
"Queensland tick typhus emergence was related to changes in natural habitats that brought disease vectors in closer contact with people."
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Diseases such as monkeypox, COVID-19, Buruli ulcers, Australian bat lyssavirus and Flinders Island spotted fever are also among the nearly 300 diseases shown to be worsened by climate change.
An interactive feature shows how the climate hazards affect the transmission pathways each pathogen takes.
For instance floods and increased precipitation displaces Mycobacterium ulcerans from their typical habitat leading to an increase in Buruli ulcers, a flesh-eating disease.
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"We found over a 1000 pathways linking a climate hazard to a human pathogen disease through a particular transmission type," Franklin said.
He added that only nine diseases were exclusively diminished by climatic hazards.
Franklin and his colleagues looked at 3,213 cases to determine their findings.
It comes after a study published April warned humanity to brace for thousands of new and emerging viruses and diseases to jump from animals to humans in the coming decades.
Climate change was deemed the chief culprit.
