Climate–Mosquito mismatch: Why changing rainfall cycles are rewriting Nigeria’s malaria transmission patterns
TL;DR
This commentary underscores the urgent need for climate-informed malaria surveillance, adaptive intervention scheduling, and stronger multisector collaboration to sustain Nigeria’s malaria control gains under a changing climate.
Abstract
Climate variability is increasingly disrupting rainfall seasonality across Nigeria, reshaping the ecological conditions that govern mosquito breeding and malaria transmission. This commentary synthesizes recent climatic modelling, entomological observations, and national surveillance data to examine how shifts in rainfall onset, intensity, and duration are generating a climate–mosquito mismatch. Altered precipitation patterns now produce earlier or delayed vector peaks, expanded breeding windows, and transmission surges outside traditional rainy seasons. These ecological disruptions undermine malaria prediction accuracy and reduce the timeliness of vector control interventions. By highlighting this emerging desynchronization between climate and vector ecology, the paper underscores the urgent need for climate-informed malaria surveillance, adaptive intervention scheduling, and stronger multisector collaboration to sustain Nigeria’s malaria control gains under a changing climate