Rising dengue risk with increasing El Niño–Southern Oscillation amplitude and teleconnections
Global climate variability has been linked with some of the largest dengue outbreaks, including the record-breaking 2023-2024 epidemic, but the understanding of their mechanism and evidence for their association is lacking. By incorporating reported dengue cases and climate data from 57 countries across the Americas and Asia from 1980 to 2024, we unpacked the global climate teleconnection and quantifying its impact on dengue cases. We revealed that the heterogeneity in the association between global climate variability and dengue cases across regions is affected by the strength and types of global climate teleconnections with temperature and precipitation. By controlling for the heterogeneity, 63% of the variation in dengue cases can be attributed to El Niño-Southern Oscillation fluctuations, with higher values in endemic regions. The 1982-83, 1997-98, 2015-16, and 2023-24 El Niño events were estimated to have induced an additional 0.2, 1.4, 4.1, and 9.6 million dengue cases, respectively, over regular seasonal patterns. Due to human-induced warming, El Niño events and teleconnections may cause a 39.0-81.7% increase in cumulative cases in 2020-2099. Our findings quantify the association between global climate variability and dengue epidemics and caution about the potential future risk.
Authors
- Z. C. Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8772-2019)
- Cheng Jian Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0474-7593)
- Zengmiao Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6954-6069)
- Bernard Cazelles (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7972-361X)
- Yun Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5031-3273)
- Qixin He (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1696-8203)
- Oliver J. Brady (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3235-2129)
- Yuyang Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1312-6446)
- Kai Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6571-0327)
- Yuanlong Wei
- Yunyu Tian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1360-1668)
- K. D. Joshi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2267-0980)
- Yiting Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7635-0806)
- Huaiyu Tian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4466-0858)
- Ahyoung Lim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4445-5034)
- Katie Susong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5040-5271)
- Qiushi Lin
- Juan Feng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2382-8500)
- Yilin Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9618-0619)
- Zixuan Ma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3965-4939)
- Y. H. Guo
- A. Campbell
Institutions
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- China Three Gorges Corporation (China) (CN)
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Sorbonne Université (FR)
- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (GB)
- Institut de Biologie de l'École Normale Supérieure (FR)
- National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center (CN)
- Unité de Modélisation Mathématique et Informatique des Systèmes Complexes (FR)
- State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science (CN)
- Beihang University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-09-29
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63655-0
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Mosquito-borne diseases and control
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.76
Funders
- Medical Research Council
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities