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Deadly Science: Bird Flu and Climatology
Aug. 14th, 2026 02:57 pmI have just hosted an exceptional researcher presentation on "Skuas as sentinels of Avian Influenza on the Antarctic Peninsula", given by Dr Michelle Wille, who is one of the country's leading experts in the subject (predicting its arrival in 2022). As someone who started 2026 in the Antarctic Peninsula, a place of outstanding and fragile beauty, I felt an emotional connection to it. In the course of organising the talk, Australia recorded its first case of the newest clade (H5N10) of the virus in June, and now there are close to 200 confirmed cases across the country; it's spreading very fast. This particular clade of the virus has not affected commercial poultry farms nor humans. This presentation, part of a series, follows on from last month's on CRITTERS (Climate, Resource, and Image Tracking in Tiny, Ecologically Representative Systems), and also is strongly tied to my recent post on phylogenetics with supercomputing; Dr Wille's group used IQ-TREE for performance and BEAST for detail.
As a scholar in climatology, I am increasingly aware of and concerned about the well-established connection between global warming (faster than at any time in Earth's history) and influenza ecology, including changes in the distribution, range, and seasonal patterns in which viruses can operate. A scoping review in 2022 from 173 studies reviewed viral biology, animal hosts, human epidemiology, and the climate effects, concluding substantial evidence for the association. With wild birds, their migrations connect enormous geographical areas and populations and the influenza virus mutates very quickly over a few replications. Taken together, this means that another COVID-like zoonotic event is not just possible but highly probable. As an example, the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b moved from wild birds, to poultry, to marine and terrestrial mammals, to dairy cattle, and eventually to humans; fortunately, there was no human-to-human transmission.
Basically, climate change alters bird ecology and migration, which in turn changes opportunities for virus transmission. More significantly, intensive poultry production, trade, and habitat destruction for wildlife have vastly increased opportunities for viral transmission and zoonoses, with the concerning prospect of influenza co-infection and reassortment generating new viral clades. For what it's worth, The Betoota Advocate has a gallows-humour article of an anti-vaxxer cockatiel. Unfortunately, I suspect there are a sufficient number of dickhead humans who choose to be equally ignorant and as incapable of responsible behaviour as the the fictional cockatiel that will make the next pandemic more dangerous than the last one; not necessarily due to the transmissibility or the fatal rate, but rather because people are so arrogant that they are so sure that they know better than actual experts and will behave as if their actions has no effect on the lives of others.
As a scholar in climatology, I am increasingly aware of and concerned about the well-established connection between global warming (faster than at any time in Earth's history) and influenza ecology, including changes in the distribution, range, and seasonal patterns in which viruses can operate. A scoping review in 2022 from 173 studies reviewed viral biology, animal hosts, human epidemiology, and the climate effects, concluding substantial evidence for the association. With wild birds, their migrations connect enormous geographical areas and populations and the influenza virus mutates very quickly over a few replications. Taken together, this means that another COVID-like zoonotic event is not just possible but highly probable. As an example, the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b moved from wild birds, to poultry, to marine and terrestrial mammals, to dairy cattle, and eventually to humans; fortunately, there was no human-to-human transmission.
Basically, climate change alters bird ecology and migration, which in turn changes opportunities for virus transmission. More significantly, intensive poultry production, trade, and habitat destruction for wildlife have vastly increased opportunities for viral transmission and zoonoses, with the concerning prospect of influenza co-infection and reassortment generating new viral clades. For what it's worth, The Betoota Advocate has a gallows-humour article of an anti-vaxxer cockatiel. Unfortunately, I suspect there are a sufficient number of dickhead humans who choose to be equally ignorant and as incapable of responsible behaviour as the the fictional cockatiel that will make the next pandemic more dangerous than the last one; not necessarily due to the transmissibility or the fatal rate, but rather because people are so arrogant that they are so sure that they know better than actual experts and will behave as if their actions has no effect on the lives of others.