The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations issued a warning on May 3 that if no measures are taken, the locust swarms currently in the north of Saudi Arabia will likely spread to Iraq , Jordan , Israel, Lebanon and Syria , and the next target will be Turkey !
Where did these locust swarms come from, or are they the 2020 swarms?
The 100 billion locust army in 2020 really made the world nervous. Although it was later clarified that there may not be hundreds of billions of locusts, the order of magnitude is not much worse. This locust army has broken through many countries in East Africa, the Middle East Iran and Pakistan The strict defense of and India has directly caused crop failure in some areas of these countries, and its destructive power is chilling!
- Where are the locust swarms in 2020?
About the end of May last year, the locust swarms in these countries suddenly disappeared, as if they had never appeared. Are the locusts dead or dead?
Locust is an insect of Acidaceae Orthoptera . There are more than 10,000 species in the world, and they are distributed in tropical, temperate and grassland and deserts. Like all insects, locusts also have a life cycle. Insect with incomplete metamorphosis of will go through three stages: locust egg, nymph (in 5 stages, one is more mature than the other) and adult.
The lifespan of locusts is generally 2-3 months. In the second half of the adult process, will begin to reproduce . After mating, the abdomen of the female will grow and lay eggs in the soil, and eggs will be secreted by the female. Foam The locust eggs can be stored for several years or even longer in a dry environment.
The outbreak of locusts in 2020 mainly came from the monsoon rains in 2018-2019. They first reproduced near Saudi Arabia and Yemen , and then moved to the surrounding area, breeding all the way, and now East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, all the way. The eggs laid after the death of the quarter locust, as long as the conditions are right in the future, they will hatch.
Where did the locusts in the outbreak in 2021 come from?
According to the situation map of desert locusts released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in May 2021, the locust swarms in Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia developed independently, or it may be that the previous locust eggs hatched, and the locust swarms in 2020 Locust swarms don't matter much.
But the locust swarms in Kenya and Somalia and Ethiopia in East Africa should have hatched from the eggs left by the locust swarms in 2020 after spawning several times, and they have now started to migrate. The Chinese FAO (FAO) has marked the destination of the upcoming flight and the approximate time of arrival.
The picture above is a map of the breeding situation of locust swarms in Ethiopia and Somalia in East Africa. The dense markings indicate the seriousness of the situation, and the red potential breeding areas are even more shocking.
FAO Senior Desert Locust Forecaster Keith Cressman said that compared with 2020, the locust swarms in East Africa will be smaller in 2021, and swarms in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are still immature. The future depends on the rainfall of the nymph season. If there is sufficient rain at this time, the size of the locust swarm may expand rapidly.
For locusts that breed in Saudi Arabia, the situation is much more serious, says Professor Ali Satar, head of the Zoology Department at Dicle University in Diyarbakır, southeastern Turkey, which will seriously affect Turkey in the future if no measures are taken.The strong southwest monsoon in April sent locusts breeding in north-central Saudi Arabia downwind to Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Syria, FAO officials said.
Judging from the previous flight route, these locusts should have migrated to Iran, Pakistan and India, but this time thanks to the southwest monsoon, the locust swarm is likely to reach Turkey if it continues.
In addition, FAO does not rule out that after the monsoon weakens, the locust swarms will move to Yemen and eastward to the Persian Gulf, etc. and return to the traditional route. If this route is taken, then the traditional route will suffer from locust disasters in the future. This year, India is being hit by an unprecedented epidemic. If it is really relocated to India, the areas where humanitarian disasters have occurred will face a double blow.
The new normal of the earth: The crisis under global warming will intensify
It is difficult to say The locust plague has nothing to do with global warming, because locust plagues always occur after major droughts, and since the beginning of the 21st century, droughts The frequency of occurrence seems to be much more frequent than in the twentieth century, and although human water conservancy facilities ensure the irrigation of crops, it does not help the locust plague.
And what is even more terrifying is the secondary effect of global warming. Any of these devils hidden under the rising global temperature may drive mankind to the precipice of extinction, and in the future mankind will need to learn how to deal with these "devils". "get along!
On January 18, 2021, an paper was published in "Nature Climate Change", saying that climate warming may change the position of the tropical rainband . The hidden information behind it is very scary, because the movement of the rainband It will change the traditional grain-producing areas. These farming areas formed over thousands of years cannot move with the rain belt. This is the most terrifying problem.
On April 8, 2021, a paper published in the " Geophysical Research Letters" stated that at the current rate of warming, one-third of the Antarctic ice shelf may collapse. First, this will cause sea level If it rises more than ten meters, the reflection effect will disappear after the glacier disappears, and the heat absorption will increase, which will aggravate global warming.
On April 20, 2021, a paper published in "Communications Earth and Environment" stated that the warm current in the Gulf of Mexico is weakening after global warming, and has weakened by 15% since the 1950s. Will reach 30%, AMOC may lose the opportunity to provide heat to the Arctic Ocean, which will cause changes in a large number of traditional fishing grounds, as well as changes in global circulation, which will affect the global climate.
