How to avoid a local epidemic becoming a global pandemic.

Here, we combine international air travel passenger data with a standard epidemiological model of the initial 3 mo of the COVID-19 pandemic (January through March 2020; toward the end of which the entire world locked down). Using the information available during this initial phase of the pandemic, our model accurately describes the main features of the actual global development of the pandemic demonstrated by the high degree of coherence between the model and global data. The validated model allows for an exploration of alternative policy efficacies (reducing air travel and/or introducing different degrees of compulsory immigration quarantine upon arrival to a country) in delaying the global spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thus is suggestive of similar efficacy in anticipating the spread of future global disease outbreaks.

Improve how science advice is provided to governments by learning from "experts in expert advice".

During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, science advisory mechanisms did not always live up to expectations. What practical steps can the expert community take to improve advisory mechanisms in an emergency?

Influence of Land Cover and Soil Moisture based Brown Ocean Effect on an Extreme Rainfall Event from a Louisiana Gulf Coast Tropical System.

Extreme flooding over southern Louisiana in mid-August of 2016 resulted from an unusual tropical low that formed and intensified over land. We used numerical experiments to highlight the role of the 'Brown Ocean' effect (where saturated soils function similar to a warm ocean surface) on intensification and it's modulation by land cover change. A numerical modeling experiment that successfully captured the flood event (control) was modified to alter moisture availability by converting wetlands to open water, wet croplands, and dry croplands.

What Do Experienced Water Managers Think of Water Resources of Our Nation and Its Management Infrastructure?

This article represents the second report by an ASCE Task Committee "Infrastructure Impacts of Landscape-driven Weather Change" under the ASCE Watershed Management Technical Committee and the ASCE Hydroclimate Technical Committee. Herein, the 'infrastructure impacts" are referred to as infrastructure-sensitive changes in weather and climate patterns (extremes and non-extremes) that are modulated, among other factors, by changes in landscape, land use and land cover change. In this first report, the article argued for explicitly considering the well-established feedbacks triggered by infrastructure systems to the land-atmosphere system via landscape change.

Future economic damage from tropical cyclones: sensitivities to societal and climate changes.

This paper examines future economic damages from tropical cyclones under a range of assumptions about societal change, climate change and the relationship of climate change to damage in 2050. It finds in all cases that efforts to reduce vulnerability to losses, often called climate adaptation, have far greater potential effectiveness to reduce damage related to tropical cyclones than efforts to modulate the behaviour of storms through greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies, typically called climate mitigation and achieved through energy policies. The paper urges caution in using economic losses of tropical cyclones as justification for action on energy policies when far more potentially effective options are available.

Meteorology: are there trends in hurricane destruction?

Since the record impact of Hurricane Katrina, attention has focused on understanding trends in hurricanes and their destructive potential. Emanuel reports a marked increase in the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on identification of a trend in an accumulated annual index of power dissipation in the North Atlantic and western North Pacific since the 1970s. If hurricanes are indeed becoming more destructive over time, then this trend should manifest itself in more destruction.