Supporting large data for: Solar geoengineering could redistribute malaria risk in developing countries

Solar geoengineering is often framed as a stopgap measure to decrease the
magnitude, impacts, and injustice of climate change. However, the benefits
or costs of geoengineering for human health are largely unknown. We
project how geoengineering could impact malaria risk by comparing current
transmission suitability and populations-at-risk under moderate and high
greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways
4.5 and 8.5) with and without geoengineering. We show that if
geoengineering deployment cools the tropics, it could help protect high
elevation populations in eastern Africa from malaria encroachment, but
could increase transmission in lowland sub-Saharan Africa and southern
Asia. Compared to extreme warming, we find that by 2070, geoengineering
would nullify a projected reduction of nearly one billion people at risk
of malaria. Our results indicate that geoengineering strategies designed
to offset warming are not guaranteed to unilaterally improve health
outcomes, and could produce regional trade-offs among Global South
countries that are often excluded from geoengineering conversations.