In 1855, surgeon John Snow, using a simple map, identified contaminated water as a source of cholera—marking a milestone in epidemiological history. More recently, HHMI Investigator Mercedes Pascual used mathematical models to reveal that complex climate patterns influence the incidence of infectious disease epidemics. Read the May 2009 HHMI Bulletin article to learn how Pascual discovered that cholera epidemics in Bangladesh vary in accordance with sea-surface temperatures 10,000 miles away in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The image below, which shows the correlation between sea surface temperature anomalies in January and cholera cases in September in Matlab, Bangladesh, helps demonstrate her findings.

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