Climate-driven disease prediction uncertainty on seasonal and decadal timescales

Dave MacLeod, Dr. Cyril Caminade, Dr. Andy Heath & Dr. Andy Morse, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK contact: dmacleod@liv.ac.uk

1 Motivation
Climate is an important forcing on disease. Temperature and precipitation affect breeding cycles and habitat availability for many vectors of infectious disease [1]. Dynamical and statistical models exist which link weather and climate anomalies to the epidemiological landscape (e.g. [2]). Seasonal climate models can be used to give some idea of potential departures from climatology up to several months in advance. Recently, decadal models have begun to be developed in order to explore the potential for useful climate prediction even further ahead. This poster explores the quality of these driving forecasts.

2 Seasonal prediction
The two seasonal models considered here are GloSea4, from the UK Met Office [3], and System 4, from ECMWF [4]. Hindcast periods are 1989-2002 and 1981-2010 respectively. The target region is the peak of the rainy season over Southern Africa (DJF). Figure 1 shows biases in temperature and precipitation. GloSea4 has a significant positive bias for temperature over equatorial regions, and large precipitation biases around the maximum of the rains; near to Zambia. Compared to GloSea4, System 4 has a moderate precipitation bias. Both models also have a large cold bias over the deserts in the south west. Figure 2 shows prediction skill for DJF, for forecasts issued in August, measured by the ROC area (1 = perfect forecast, 0.5 = the score of climatology). Comparison is made between GloSea4 and System 4 upper tercile temperature and precipitation. System 4 has much higher skill for temperature, particularly nearer to the equator. Scores for precipitation are roughly similar.

3 Decadal prediction
We look here at skill in prediction of multi-year temperature and precipitation trends in the ENSEMBLES decadal hindcasts [5]. In this experiment hindcasts were produced by four modeling systems for ten start dates every five years from 1960-2005, with each simulation running forwards for ten years. We consider multi year temperature and rainfall trends for various regions across the globe and look at the significance level of correlation between simulations and observations (NCEP reanalysis). Figure 3 shows significance levels, warmer colors indicating higher significance (see caption for details). Significant temperature trends are seen at 99% for many years at global scale. At smaller regions some significant trends are observed, though with few regions showing significance at the 99% level. Significance of precipitation trends are patchy, and cannot be confidently said to be different from what might be expected from random data. One region which may be showing some signal is the West Sahel.
FIGURE 3: Multi year trend correlation significance levels for annual temperature (left) and precipitation (right). Each quadrant in each square stands for one of the four models in the ENSEMBLES decadal (clockwise from top left: UK Met Office, ECMWF, IFM-GEOMAR, CERFACS). Yellow/orange/red squares indicate correlations significant at the 90%/95%/99% levels respectively.

4 Conclusions
Seasonal prediction GloSea4 has larger biases for DJF over most of Southern Africa than System 4. Temperature prediction skill of System 4 is better than GloSea4. Precipitation skill is similar in the two systems. Decadal prediction Annual global temperature trend correlations are significant for multiple trend lengths for all models. At smaller spatial scales significant trends are observed, though for rarely more than one model at a time. It cannot be confidently stated that significance levels for precipitation trends are different from that expected from random data. Implications for disease prediction Biases are an issue for climate-driven disease models, which can be very sensitive to thresholds. System 4s smaller biases and its higher predictive skill seen in Southern Africa (and elsewhere not shown), suggest that forecasts from System 4 may be more useful than those from GloSea4 for disease prediction. The absence of decadal skill on spatial scales smaller than global suggests that decadal forecasts from ENSEMBLES are not good enough to integrate usefully with disease models, as the scale on which climate impacts disease is local. However some regions may have some predictable signal which warrants further research. This may evolve with new decadal modeling results from CMIP5 [6].
References
[1] Rosenthal, J. (2009). Climate Change and the Geographic Distribution of Infectious Diseases. EcoHealth, 6, 489-495. [2] Hoshen, M., & Morse, A. (2004). A weather-driven model of malaria transmission. Malaria journal, 3(1), 32. [3] Arribas, A., Glover, M., Maidens, a., Peterson, K., Gordon, M., MacLachlan, C., Graham, R., et al. (2011). The GloSea4 Ensemble Prediction System for Seasonal Forecasting. Monthly Weather Review, 139(6), 1891-1910. [4] System 4 documentation at ECMWF website: http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/seasonal/documentation/system4/index.html [5] van der Linden P., and J.F.B. Mitchell (eds.) 2009: ENSEMBLES: Climate Change and its Impacts: Summary of research and results from the ENSEMBLES project. Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK. 160pp. [6] CMIP5 website - http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/0

FIGURE 1: Southern Africa DJF biases for GloSea4 (top row) and System 4 (bottom). Seasonal average temperature (left) and precipitation biases (right) are shown.

FIGURE 2: Prediction skill in August for Southern Africa, austral summer (December-February), from GloSea4 (top row) and System 4 (bottom row). ROC areas are shown for upper tercile seasonal average temperature, scored against NCEP (left column) and precipitation, scored against GPCP (right).