American Geophysical Union (AGU) Chapman Conference on Climate and Health in Africa; Washington, District of Columbia; June 7-10, 2022

Extreme weather events are hazardous to human health in many ways. Some health risks, such as heat stroke, result directly from human exposure to exreme conditions. Others, such as cholera outbreaks, occur indirectly as extreme weather overwhelms infrastructure for clean water, sanitation, and other necessities of human health.

Such health risks are expected to worsen due to climate change, as warmer temperatures lead to increased incidence of heat waves, droughts, fires, and floods. They are also of greatest concern in regions of social vulnerability, including much of Africa.

This award provides support for a conference which brings together researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to consider the health impacts of climate extremes in Africa and develop strategies to respond to them. The conference is motivated in part by recent advances in the prediction of African weather and climate extremes which have not yet been incorporated into health early warning systems and other public health efforts.

Interactions across multiple research disciplines and between researchers and stakeholders will be required to fully realize the heath benefits of better climate information. This conference serves as a starting point for such interactions.

The meeting is organized as a Chapman Conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), to be held June 7-10 at the AGU headquarters building in Washington DC. Deliverables of the meeting, in addition to its role as a venue to foster interactions, include conference proceedings published as an AGU monograph or special issue, a meeting report intended for a non-technical audience, and a while paper with recommendations for the use of climate information to improve health outcomes in Africa.

Funds provided by the National Science Foundation support the travel of students, early-career scientists, and invited speakers to attend the meeting. Support for the meeting comes from the Geosciences (GEO), Biological Sciences (BIO), and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorates, and complements support provided by other federal agencies and non-governmental sources.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.