"For example, we are learning now that the earth's climate apparently changed prior to the Black Death," says Varlik. "In that case it was a period of global cooling. It is possible that rainfall then increased and made vegetation more available, which in turn added to the rodent population, and rodents spread plague. Evidence is increasing that each time before a large pandemic, something has happened in the environment."

Varlik is not predicting that modern climate change will cause another pandemic, but her work – which appears in a chapter in a new volume titled Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death – illustrates how events that shift the balance between humans and nature apparently can trigger calamities in ways never considered before.

 This was published in January comparing Ebola to the Black Plague., which points out climate changes that happened.  

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-ebola-deaths-parallels-devastating-medieval.html#nRlv

A new publication, "Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death," looks at new research into the plague and its historical significance. The publication is the inaugural issue of a new journal, The Medieval Globe, sponsored by the University of Illinois Program in Medieval Studies.

Carol Symes, a professor of history and medieval studies at the U. of I., is the executive editor of the journal. Symes said the issue brings together scholars in the humanities and those in the sciences to consider the significance of the recent discoveries regarding the plague and their relevance to concerns today about emerging infectious diseases.

The journal issue looks at scientific breakthroughs of the past few years, including the 2011 sequencing of the genome of the plague pathogen entirely from historical remains, and the theory that a "big bang" of the organism occurred between the 12th and 14th centuries in an area now part of China, ultimately causing the Black Death pandemic. Articles consider how the infection might have spread, why it persisted and why some populations seemed to have immunity while other regions were wiped out. It also includes an article detailing the excavation of a Jewish cemetery in Catalonia, which provided archaeological evidence of an uprising against Jews, who were being blamed for the outbreak of disease.

We can learn a lot from history that can be applied to modern out breaks.  

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-12-journal-significance-black-death.html#nRlv