Fungal Disease Spreading With Warming Climate
September 23, 2025
Climate change is helping valley fever, a potentially fatal fungal disease, spread from the Southwest into cooler and more developed regions, USA Today reports. This would be no surprise to Angel N. Desai and George R. Thompson III. In Issues, they note that fungi are “disturbingly effective at exploiting the conditions created by increasingly frequent extreme weather events in environments inhabited by humans.” The authors call for a “coordinated response to the movement, adaptation, and proliferation of these understudied pathogens,” including “a diversified policy strategy that encompasses agricultural practices, forest management, and health care.”