The frequent warnings that global climate change will allow falciparum mala
ria to spread into northern Latitudes, including Europe and Large parts of
the United States, are based on biological transmission models driven princ
ipally by temperature. These models were assessed for their value in predic
ting present, and therefore future, malaria distribution. In an alternative
statistical approach, the recorded present-day global distribution of falc
iparum malaria was used to establish the current multivariate climatic cons
traints. These results were applied to future climate scenarios to predict
future distributions, which showed remarkably few changes, even under the m
ost extreme scenarios.