Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Aug 28, 2025

Climate change increases risk of new viruses emerging: Research

Climate change increases risk of new viruses emerging: Research

Likely hot spots include the Sahel, Ethiopian Highlands, Rift Valley, India, eastern China, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Climate change will drive animals towards cooler areas where their first encounters with other species will vastly increase the risk of new viruses infecting humans, researchers warned on Thursday.

There are currently at least 10,000 viruses “circulating silently” among wild mammals that have the capacity to cross over into humans, mostly in the depths of tropical forests.

As rising temperatures force those mammals to abandon their native habitats, they will meet other species for the first time, creating at least 15,000 new instances of viruses jumping between animals by 2070, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

“We have demonstrated a novel and potentially devastating mechanism for disease emergence that could threaten the health of animal populations in the future, which will most likely have ramifications for our health too,” said study co-author Gregory Albery, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University.

“This work provides us with more incontrovertible evidence that the coming decades will not only be hotter, but sicker,” Albery said.

The study, five years in the making, looked at 3,139 species of mammals, modelling how their movements would change under a range of global warming scenarios, then analysing how viral transmission would be affected.

Researchers found that new contacts between different mammals would effectively double, with first encounters occurring everywhere in the world, but particularly concentrated in tropical Africa and Southeast Asia.


The threat of bats


Global warming will also cause those first contacts to take place in more highly populated areas, where people “are likely to be vulnerable, and some viruses will be able to spread globally from any of these population centres”, according to the research.

Likely hot spots include the Sahel, the Ethiopian Highlands and the Rift Valley, India, eastern China, Indonesia, the Philippines and some European population centres, the study found.

The research was completed just weeks before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but emphasised the unique threat posed by bats, in which COVID-19 is believed to have first emerged. As the only mammal that can fly, bats can travel far greater distances than their land-bound brethren, spreading disease as they go.

Bats are believed to already be on the move, and the study found they accounted for a large majority of potential first encounters with other mammals, mostly in Southeast Asia.


Even if the world does massively and quickly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions – a scenario that still seems some way off – it might not help for this problem.

The modelling showed that the mildest climate change scenarios could lead to more cross-species transmission than the worst-case scenarios, because slower warming gives the animals more time to travel.


‘Not preventable’


The researchers also tried to work out when the first encounters between species could start happening, expecting it would be later this century.

But “surprisingly” their projections found that most first contacts would be between 2011 and 2040, steadily increasing from there.

“This is happening. It is not preventable even in the best-case climate change scenarios, and we need to put measures in place to build health infrastructure to protect animal and human populations,” Albery said.

The researchers emphasised that while they had focused on mammals, other animals could harbour zoonotic viruses – the name for viruses that jump from animals to humans.

They called for further research on the threat posed by birds, amphibians and even marine mammals, as melting sea ice allows them to mingle more.

The study’s co-author Colin Carlson, a global change biologist also at Georgetown, said climate change is “creating innumerable hot spots of future zoonotic risk – or present-day zoonotic risk – right in our backyard”.

“We have to acknowledge that climate change is going to be the biggest upstream driver of disease emergence,” Carlson said, “and we have to build health systems that are ready for that.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
High-Stakes Trump-Putin Summit on Ukraine Underway in Alaska
Iranian Protection Offers Chinese Vehicle Shipments a Cost Advantage over Japanese and Korean Makers
Saudi Arabia accelerates renewables to curb domestic oil use
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez announce engagement
Asia-Pacific dominates world’s busiest flight routes, with South Korea’s Jeju–Seoul corridor leading global rankings
Private Welsh island with 19th-century fort listed for sale at over £3 million
Sam Altman challenges Elon Musk with plans for Neuralink rival
Australia to Recognize the State of Palestine at UN Assembly
The Collapse of the Programmer Dream: AI Experts Now the Real High-Earners
Armenia and Azerbaijan to Sign US-Brokered Framework Agreement for Nakhchivan Corridor
British Labour Government Utilizes Counter-Terrorism Tools for Social Media Monitoring Against Legitimate Critics
WhatsApp Deletes 6.8 Million Scam Accounts Amid Rising Global Fraud
Nine people have been hospitalized and dozens of salmonella cases have been reported after an outbreak of infections linked to certain brands of pistachios and pistachio-containing products, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada
Texas Residents Face Water Restrictions While AI Data Centers Consume Millions of Gallons
Tariffs, AI, and the Shifting U.S. Macro Landscape: Navigating a New Economic Regime
India Rejects U.S. Tariff Threat, Defends Russian Oil Purchases
United States Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
Thousands of Private ChatGPT Conversations Accidentally Indexed by Google
China Tightens Mineral Controls, Curtailing Critical Inputs for Western Defence Contractors
OpenAI’s Bold Bet: Teaching AI to Think, Not Just Chat
BP’s Largest Oil and Gas Find in 25 Years Uncovered Offshore Brazil
JPMorgan and Coinbase Unveil Partnership to Let Chase Cardholders Buy Crypto Directly
British Tourist Dies Following Hair Transplant in Turkey, Police Investigate
WhatsApp Users Targeted in New Scam Involving Account Takeovers
Trump Deploys Nuclear Submarines After Threats from Former Russian President Medvedev
Germany’s Economic Breakdown and the Return of Militarization: From Industrial Collapse to a New Offensive Strategy
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
×