The earth’s climate is becoming increasingly
warmer, most likely due to increasing greenhouse gas
emissions. Climate variation is driven by uneven distribution
of solar heating, the individual responses of the atmosphere,
oceans and land surface, the interactions between these and
the physical characteristics of the regions. Climate, more
especially temperature has a strong and direct influence on
development, reproduction and survival of tropical insects
such as mosquitoes. Insect population growth potentials are
mainly temperature driven, so a rise in temperature may
either increase or decrease insect development. This paper
highlights the influence of temperature on malaria cases in
Orlu Macro-climate in Imo state of Nigeria. It employed the
use of 20 years (1991-2010) temperature data of Orlu from
Nigerian Meteorological agency and 20 years data on
malaria cases in Orlu collected from the (9) nine health
centers located within Orlu Local Government Area. In the
correlation analysis, adopting Pearson’s correlation
coefficient method, there was stability in high temperature
regime with stable increases in malaria cases. Therefore, the
results show that more than 50% of the malaria cases were,
influenced by increase in temperature in the area. This
means that temperature enhances mosquito breed, which
causes spread of malaria in the environment. Hence,
evidence of climate variability in Nigeria includes increasing
heat waves, which enhances disease vectors, communicable
diseases and epidemics. However, the people try to prevent
the spread of malaria in the environment to some extent, but
the study suggested more measures that are preventive.