With the heat, the mosquitoes come

Researchers have transferred investigated, as the warming favours the spread of mosquitoes, the dangerous tropical diseases. Half a billion people and could mosquitoes by increasing temperatures in the range of the Asian tiger and yellow fever mosquitoes back. Europe is among the regions where the mosquitoes are likely to spread particularly strong. the By Christopher Schrader Christopher Schrader

Christopher Schrader is a freelance writer in the science Department of the süddeutsche Zeitung. He mainly writes about energy and climate topics in Geosciences, and engineering. Schrader is Nannen physicist and a graduate of the Henri school, the school of journalism of the publishing house Gruner+Jahr. He was editor of the SZ, Geo-Knowledge and the Swiss news magazine Facts.

< p > E-Mail

mosquitoes are the Empire, the most evil human killer of the animal. The blood-sucking insects transmit viruses and other pathogens: Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika, West Nile Virus, yellow fever, and Malaria. Climate change has now begun a large Migration of mosquitoes you find in many new regions with good living conditions. In Karlsruhe and other places in southern Germany, for example, experts have already been found in mosquitoes in 2017 and 2018, the Asian tigers, which were probably introduced from the South of the Alps.

climate change is likely these and other Stechtieren roll out in the coming decades in many regions of the world, so to speak, a red carpet. According to a new projection of almost a billion people could be more than in the past the tropics exposed to diseases that are transmitted by the species Aedes albopictus (tiger mosquito) and Aedes aegypti (yellow fever mosquito). The scientists led by Sadie Ryan of the University of Florida reports in Gainesville.

"people are very good at moving critters and their Pathogens across the globe," says Ryan. The researchers consider different cases: on the one Hand, to the years 2050 and 2080, on the other hand, four from the IPCC-designed scenarios, and how bad global warming is, from the maximum braked climate change in the scenario RCP2.6, that adheres to the Paris targets, and the Two-degree limit safely, to the complete unmitigated scenario RCP8.5.

Tiger and yellow fever mosquitoes in 30 years in Germany, home of the tigers to be

Thus, mosquitoes in 30 years in virtually all of Germany in the summer of one to three months for a home, even under the maximum braking climate scenarios. Yellow can keep mosquitoes fever, however, only in the North-East and South-West, mainly in Brandenburg and Baden-Württemberg, about a month long. Even such a short time present a hazard, warn the scientists, both species can breed explosively, and then an acute outbreak of a disease trigger. The temperatures should rise stronger than in the best conceivable case, the mosquitoes also better conditions. In the worst case, the insect spread nearly half of each year, their pathogen cargo.

Anyway, Europe (divided into West, middle and East) at the top of the hit list of the regions which could have the most of the new victims: depending on the scenario and time period is 150 to 470 million in the case of the yellow fever, and 230 to 440 million in the case of the tiger mosquito. Just East Africa the yellow fever mosquito is also one of the first three places in the growth statistics. There is then in the same order of magnitude as in Central Europe 50 million to 90 million potentially re-infecting people.

Should run the climate change unabated, practically, then it is likely to be for the tiger in some regions of the world already too hot for mosquitoes. You not only tolerate good 29 degrees Celsius, then the transfer of disease works agents as well. The result is that in RCP8.5 in large Parts of South-East Asia, Africa and in the Amazon basin the rates of infection by Aedes albopictus fall. The one should not hold but for good news, warns Colin Carlson of Georgetown University in Washington DC: "Every scenario in which it will be too hot for the transmission of the Dengue pathogen, contains other and similar to dangerous changes in the health sector."