Search the SPREP Catalogue

Climate ExChange is a fully illustrated 250-page book with over 100 authors relating their work in weather, climate and water services at international, regional, national and local levels. The commentaries draw upon experiences around the world reflecting how people are using climate information to improve their lives. Climate ExChange reflects the progress and challenges in these fields, highlighting good practices in a wide variety of societies and disciplines.

Infectious diseases take a heavy toll on populations around the world. Some of the most virulent infections are also highly sensitive to climate conditions. For example, temperature, precipitation and humidity have a strong influence on the reproduction, survival and biting rates of the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and dengue fever, and temperature affects the lifecycles of the infectious agents themselves. The same meteorological factors also influence the transmission of water and food-borne diseases such as cholera, and other forms of diarrhoeal disease. Hot, dry conditions favour meningococcal meningitis – a major cause of disease across much of Africa. All of these diseases are major health problems. Diarrhoea kills over two million people annually, and malaria almost one million. Meningitis kills thousands, blights lives and hampers economic development in the poorest countries. Some 50 million people around the world suffer from dengue fever each year. The public health community has made important progress against all of these diseases in recent decades, but they will continue to cause death and suffering for the foreseeable future.