AccuWeather Vice President of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the August 15 edition of Climate In The News.
00:00Today we're covering a couple of interesting climate stories all about bugs.
00:04Brad, our first article from Time about what climate change means for summertime bugs.
00:10Obviously we know about mosquitoes in the US and it seems like climate change is having
00:14significant impacts not just on mosquitoes but many other types of insects.
00:16Yes, extinction issues, but the big deal is really the emergence is becoming earlier now
00:23with warming of course and then many insects that are harmful are dying off later or not
00:27dying off at all during the entire season.
00:30So this is harming ecosystems, again, health, agriculture, mosquitoes, ticks are the big
00:35deal here.
00:36Ticks maintaining themselves through the winter, you know, it used to be the winter, no ticks,
00:42but now that's a problem, mosquito population expanding northward and carrying more disease.
00:48Obviously they're expanding northward and they also have been shown that the insects are
00:53more abundant in the places that they've already been, that has more human health impacts.
00:57So what about pollinators, how are they impacted?
01:00Yeah, that's a problem.
01:02Pollinators, again, play a very important role.
01:05They play a role in over 35% of the world's crop production.
01:09However, with climate change, many flowers are emerging earlier before the pollinators emerge,
01:15and so by the time the pollinators emerge, there's no more flower.
01:19So obviously a significant impact on the entire ecosystem.
01:23We'll turn to our second article, this from Florida today, about fire ants.
01:27If you've been to Florida, you may know about fire ants, the big mounds of ants they're moving all about.
01:33Don't step on them.
01:34They can cause very bad stings and in fact have led to some fatalities in certain cases.
01:39But, Brett, it seems like these fire ants, they're also being impacted by a warming climate.
01:44Yes, we're seeing expansion of fire ants because of less freezes across the southeast.
01:51And so, again, just like mosquitoes or ticks especially, they're able to maintain a higher population through the entire year.
01:58Warmer, wetter conditions with climate change also favor the population of these ants.
02:03Now, I didn't realize also the amount of damage they're causing, 8.75 billion dollars of economic damages annually by these fire ants.
02:11So certainly an impact to people and an impact to the economy, not just the temperature though, also it seems like heavy rain events are impacting the fire ants.
02:18Yes, what's happening is these flash floods, we're seeing many more flash floods now, and what happens is the mounds, the ant mounds, they all cluster around together and the ants actually float on the flooding waters and this allows them to get transported into even more areas.
02:34So, real bad thing.
02:36Yeah, floating ants doesn't sound like a good thing, they also harm alligators, which is quite interesting, and it seems like there's a couple of different techniques they're trying to use in Florida to help mitigate these.
02:45There's a decapitating fly, an insect they've tried to introduce that kills these ants, a natural predator, and also the expert advice is to plant trees on your property so that you introduce shade and the ants don't like shade.
02:58So thank you, Brett, for that information about all about bugs today. For more information about climate, you can find that at AccuWeather.com slash climate.
