The analysis wrt Locust issue is appended below for your reading and
learn how to tackle it. The causes and govt likely preventive action
are also enumerated in the screenshots attached.1. All that happens in S. Asia and Aus. directly or indirectly goes back to the fact that the Indian Ocean is landlocked on 3 sides with a narrow the corridor between Indonesia and Australia connecting it with the Pacific. Everything includes locusts.
2. The entirety of the Indian Ocean weather game boils down to one extremely simple but unpredictable natural phenomenon — the Indian Ocean Dipole, or IOD. Slightly more patterned than the El Niño of the Pacific but that's changing now.
3. But before we get to understanding the IOD, let's acknowledge one fact: The Indian Ocean is the warmest of all 5 oceans and that's because it's the only one perfectly shielded from the Arctic, thanks to the Afro-Asian landmass.
4. Warmer water means warmer air. Warm air expands and rises, that's how hot-air balloons work. This means lower air pressure. And air that rises from water, the body contains moisture, some of which eventually condenses as clouds and returns as rains.
5. Cooler water, on the other hand, means cooler air. Cool air is denser and hence heavier. That means higher pressure. Since this air descends from above, there's no moisture, so no rain. So, warm water = low pressure = rains, and cold water = high pressure = no rains.
6. Also, should the warm and cold waters be connected, there's also movement of both air and water between the 2 zones. Now, the Indian subcontinent marks a dividing point between the eastern and the western halves of the Indian Ocean (EIO and WIO).
7. The dipole is calculated as the difference of temperatures between the two sides: T(WIO) - T(EIO) If the temperature is uniform, this value is 0 and the dipole is neutral. If the west (the African side) is warmer than the east (the Aus. side), it's a positive dipole.
8. Whichever side is warmer, gets strong winds and tons of rains. The other side gets draughts and if it's Australia, bushfires. But what makes the dipole shift? Winds. Every spring, the strong South Easterly winds drive cold Pacific waters through the corridor.
9. This drive pushes the warmer Indian Ocean waters westward. Eventually, you have a situation where the Indian Ocean is cooler around Australia and warmer around Africa. A positive dipole. This triggers rains in East Africa and the Middle East, and Monsoons in India.
10. The stronger the dipole, i.e., steeper the temperature gradient between Africa and Australia, the stronger the rains and likelier the cyclones in the East. Also, likelier the odds of droughts and bushfires in Australia. Remember the wildfires of last year?
11. Historically, this dipole has stayed within safe limits. Even a spike of fractional degrees can have resounding impacts on the region's climate. In 2018, this difference crossed 2°C. And this is only expected to get worse thanks to climate change.
12. Why though? Because more Arctic ice is melting each year. That means more meltwater emptying into the Pacific. This is cold water, very cold. The colder the water rushing into the Indian Ocean, the stronger the positive dipole and it's easy to see how.
13. Thanks to one such, very strong dipole, 2018 saw torrential rains over all of East Africa and the Middle East. So torrential there were floods in regions that have remained parched for decades. There were ephemeral lakes in the middle of deserts.
14. Locusts are no ordinary grasshoppers, they're the piranhas of the skies. And resilient like few other living beings. Their strength comes from numbers. And adaptivity. A single locust can and does eat its own body weight in food. In a day. That is about 2 grams.
15. Two grams sound like nothing. Until you realize they don't come alone. Locusts fly in swarms. Some as big as 5 Bombays. Billions of locusts flying as a unit, devouring everything edible in their path. Even each other should it come to that?
16. Any locust that stops is promptly attacked and eaten by its friends. So 2 imperatives if you are one: 1. Don't get tired, keep flying, and 2. Don't fly solo because you might starve and need to eat your friends. To ensure they don't tire, locusts ride the wind.
17. Riding with the wind also helps follow food. That's because surface wind always flows from high-pressure regions to low-pressure regions. And low-pressure regions are where rains happen. Rains mean vegetation, ergo food. It's a working system.
18. Locust moms lay sacks of eggs. Anywhere between 50 and 100 eggs per sack. Of course, not all eggs hatch. They need cool, moist earth to hatch. But that's hardly a problem. Locust eggs have been found to stay dormant for as many as 20 years awaiting favorable conditions!
19. Once hatched, wingless larvae typically mature into adolescent "hoppers" (since they still can't fly) in about 2 weeks. But should there be enough rains, this can fast-track to days. Hoppers follow the smell of sprouting grass and somewhere along the way, grow wings.
20. Once winged, they take off. Soon, guided by pheromones from fellow locusts, they form into swarms. Riding the wind, a swarm can cover as many as 90 miles a day. Along the way, they breed. A typical locust reaches sexual maturity in about 3 months.
21. That means a new generation every quarter, 20x more locusts with each generations. That's a most conservative estimate. A single swarm can devour up to 200 tons of food in a day and not burp. A single locust is easy to kill. But numbers like this?
22. The summer of 2018 brought unprecedented rains to Africa and the Middle East. Lakes appeared in the deserts of Oman. Something happened in those lakes. Locust eggs that had sat dormant for 10 years, 20 years suddenly came to life.
23. This hatching went undetected because nobody bothers venturing that deep into the desert. While this happened in Oman, another set hatched in the jungles of Kenya. Soon, the two hatcheries clustered together to form a super swarm that moved eastward with the Westerlies.
24. Remember this swarm already numbered in the billions and multiplied by 20-100 every 3 months. By the beginning of this year, it has entered the Indian subcontinent. The situation was further compounded by the global lockdown because pesticides couldn't be moved.
25. The @FAO has identified 3 hotspots — the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and...the Indian Subcontinent. As you read this thread, the super swarm has reached Maharashtra's Vidarbha. This is the region with most farmer suicides in India. What happens next is easy to guess.
26. If this sounds apocalyptic, do recall the original trigger. What helped them hatch? Torrential rains were it shouldn't. What triggered that? The abnormally high IOD. why? Because of melting icecaps. Should the trend continue, this may not be that anomalous anymore....
You can have a look of the video below which is of Jaipur in May 2020 where locusts came in swarms of millions. Well, you need to be cautious as such a large swarm can harm humans too. These locusts generally have a life cycle of 45 days.
The below news writeup will give you a better understanding of the locust and how it needs to be managed.
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