Pakistan

The impact of climate change and SRM on malaria in South Asia

Host institution

COMSATS University Islamabad

Grant year

2023

Project summary

Vector-born diseases, such as malaria, can be particularly sensitive to a changing climate, creating new risks for millions of people in malaria endemic countries. Prof. Athar Hussain will lead the first team exploring how the use of SRM could affect the impacts of climate change on malaria in South Asia, including Iran, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The project is an extension of Prof. Hussain’s efforts to establish a professional cadre of local experts on climate change and diseases in Pakistan, and will foster engagement with a diverse set of national stakeholders. The resulting climate-health nexus information will be shared with policy makers, to help increase understanding about the risks and potential benefits of SRM.

The team

dmf pi prof athat hussain profile photo
COMSATS University Islamabad
Athar Hussain has a PhD in Physics from Quaid-i-Azam University, in Islamabad, and a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. He has served as COMSATS Science Ambassador for Climate Change since 2015, and as Head of Centre for Climate Research and Development (CCRD) at COMSATS University since 2018. His current research interests include climate change and attribution. He has considerable research and teaching experience in Japan, Taiwan, USA, Saudi Arabia, and several countries in Europe. He has delivered a large number of seminars based on his research at institutes such as FNAL and ASPEN (USA), CERN (Switzerland), DESY (Germany), LAPP (France), KIAS (Korea), and KEK and YITP (Japan).
dmf researcher muhammed ali khan
COMSATS University Islamabad
Muhammed Ali Khan is a professional Meteorologist and is currently enrolled as a full-time graduate student in the Department of Meteorology, COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI). His research interests include Monsoon dynamics, large-scale atmospheric dynamics and associated climatic impacts, identifying climate change impacts on precipitation patterns and associated mechanisms on both local and global scales through various types of observational, reanalysis and remotely sensed datasets.
COMSATS University Islamabad
Varisha Khan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan, and is currently a Masters student studying Health Informatics at COMSATS University, Islamabad where she is working on projects related to Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Health Informatics in GIS, and Project Management.
COMSATS University Islamabad
Muhammad Shoaib holds a Masters degree in Health Informatics and currently works as a research associate at the Centre for Climate Research and Development (CCRD) at COMSATS University Islamabad. Recently he has been involved in research using the VECTRI malaria model looking at vector-born diseases in the endemic regions of Pakistan.
COMSATS University Islamabad
Hassaan Sipra is a climate and environmental researcher formerly affiliated with COMSATS University Islamabad. Currently, he is working as a consultant on various projects, including for the Resources for the Future (RFF) Solar Geoengineering Research Project and for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) . He holds a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University and is a former Andrew Sabin International Environmental Fellow.

Photo credits

Banner: Batura Glacier, Pakistan – Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission (2021) Credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

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