When Cyclone Yaku hit the northern coast of Peru in March 2023, it unleashed hurricane-force winds and torrents of rain, triggering landslides and flooding. Then came El Niño, a periodic warming of eastern Pacific Ocean surface waters, boosting rainfall and fomenting an explosion of pool-breeding Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the main vector of dengue fever. The ensuing outbreak of dengue – a viral infection that causes high temperature, headaches, vomiting and joint pain – may also have been given added momentum by climate change. At higher temperatures, the mosquitoes bite more often, egg-hatching speeds up, and the dengue virus itself replicates faster. By late June, 2023, more than 160,000 people in Peru had been infected with dengue and 287 had died.
Dengue, warns John Vidal in Fevered Planet, “is perfectly suited to spread fast in a warming, more humid, urbanised world”. And it is one of many such maladies that thrive in an era of climate crisis and environmental degradation.
