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"Williams, A."
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Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests
Increased forest fire activity across the western continental United States (US) in recent decades has likely been enabled by a number of factors, including the legacy of fire suppression and human settlement, natural climate variability, and human-caused climate change. We use modeled climate projections to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to observed increases in eight fuel aridity metrics and forest fire area across the western United States. Anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel aridity across western US forests over the past several decades and, during 2000–2015, contributed to 75% more forested area experiencing high (>1 σ) fire-season fuel aridity and an average of nine additional days per year of high fire potential. Anthropogenic climate change accounted for ∼55% of observed increases in fuel aridity from 1979 to 2015 across western US forests, highlighting both anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability as important contributors to increased wildfire potential in recent decades. We estimate that human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence. Natural climate variability will continue to alternate between modulating and compounding anthropogenic increases in fuel aridity, but anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a driver of increased forest fire activity and should continue to do so while fuels are not limiting.
Journal Article
Confronting Our Next National Health Disaster — Long-Haul Covid
Some 10 to 30% of Americans who’ve been infected with SARS-CoV-2 are still having debilitating symptoms months later, a trend that suggests that “long Covid” is our next public health disaster in the making. What form will this disaster take, and what can we do about it?
Journal Article
Colour bar : the triumph of Seretse Khama and his nation
\"London, 1945. The heir apparent to the kingship of Bechuanaland (later Botswana) arrives in Britain to complete his legal studies. Seretse Khama, an urbane 24-year-old, educated like Mandela at Fore Hare, is welcomed into the elite world of the Inner Temple in London. But then, in 1947, he does something that will change the course of his life, and that of his country, forcing him into six long years of exile: he falls in love with a white British woman, Ruth Williams. Drawing on a mass of previously classified records, Susan Williams tells Seretse and Ruth's story\"--Amazon.com.
Book
A westward extension of the warm pool leads to a westward extension of the Walker circulation, drying eastern Africa
Observations and simulations link anthropogenic greenhouse and aerosol emissions with rapidly increasing Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Over the past 60 years, the Indian Ocean warmed two to three times faster than the central tropical Pacific, extending the tropical warm pool to the west by ~40° longitude (>4,000 km). This propensity toward rapid warming in the Indian Ocean has been the dominant mode of interannual variability among SSTs throughout the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans (55°E–140°W) since at least 1948, explaining more variance than anomalies associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In the atmosphere, the primary mode of variability has been a corresponding trend toward greatly increased convection and precipitation over the tropical Indian Ocean. The temperature and rainfall increases in this region have produced a westward extension of the western, ascending branch of the atmospheric Walker circulation. Diabatic heating due to increased mid-tropospheric water vapor condensation elicits a westward atmospheric response that sends an easterly flow of dry air aloft toward eastern Africa. In recent decades (1980–2009), this response has suppressed convection over tropical eastern Africa, decreasing precipitation during the ‘long-rains’ season of March–June. This trend toward drought contrasts with projections of increased rainfall in eastern Africa and more ‘El Niño-like’ conditions globally by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Increased Indian Ocean SSTs appear likely to continue to strongly modulate the Warm Pool circulation, reducing precipitation in eastern Africa, regardless of whether the projected trend in ENSO is realized. These results have important food security implications, informing agricultural development, environmental conservation, and water resource planning.
Journal Article
New Paradigms to Help Solve the Global Aquaculture Disease Crisis
Grant D. Stentiford, Kallaya Sritunyalucksana, Timothy W. Flegel, Bryony A. P. Williams, Boonsirm Withyachumnarnkul, Orn Itsathitphaisarn, David Bass Affiliations Pathology and Molecular Systematics Team, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Weymouth, United Kingdom, Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, United KingdomCitation: Stentiford GD, Sritunyalucksana K, Flegel TW, Williams BAP, Withyachumnarnkul B, Itsathitphaisarn O, et al. [...]funding support is acknowledged from the European Commission (EC) and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) under contracts C6928 and FB002 (to GDS and DB); from the Royal Society under a University Research Fellowship (to BAPW); and to the Agricultural Research Development Agency (ARDA) and National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) (to KS, TWF, and OI).
Journal Article
Spies in the Congo : America's atomic mission in World War II
\"In the 1940s, the brightest minds of the United States and Nazi Germany raced to West Africa with a single mission: to secure the essential ingredient of the atomic bomb--and to make sure nobody saw them doing it. Albert Einstein told President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 that the world's only supply of uniquely high-quality uranium ore--the key ingredient for the atomic bomb--could be found in the Katanga province of the Belgian Congo at the Shinkolobwe Mine. Once the US Manhattan Project was committed to developing atomic weapons for the war against Germany and Japan, the rush to procure this uranium became a top priority--one deemed 'vital to the welfare of the United States.' But covertly exporting it from Africa posed a major risk: the ore had to travel via a spy-infested Angolan port or 1,500 miles by rail through the Congo, and then be shipped by boats or Pan Am Clippers to safety in the United States. It could be poached or smuggled at any point on the orders of Nazi Germany. To combat that threat, the US Office of Strategic Services sent in a team of intrepid spies, led by Wilbur Owings 'Dock' Hogue, to be America's eyes and ears and to protect its most precious and destructive cargo. Packed with newly discovered details from American and British archives, this is the gripping, true story of the unsung heroism of a handful of good men--and one woman--in colonial Africa who risked their lives in the fight against fascism and helped deny Hitler his atomic bomb\"--Publisher description.
Book
Land–atmosphere feedbacks exacerbate concurrent soil drought and atmospheric aridity
Compound extremes such as cooccurring soil drought (low soil moisture) and atmospheric aridity (high vapor pressure deficit) can be disastrous for natural and societal systems. Soil drought and atmospheric aridity are 2 main physiological stressors driving widespread vegetation mortality and reduced terrestrial carbon uptake. Here, we empirically demonstrate that strong negative coupling between soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit occurs globally, indicating high probability of cooccurring soil drought and atmospheric aridity. Using the Global Land Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (GLACE)-CMIP5 experiment, we further show that concurrent soil drought and atmospheric aridity are greatly exacerbated by land–atmosphere feedbacks. The feedback of soil drought on the atmosphere is largely responsible for enabling atmospheric aridity extremes. In addition, the soil moisture–precipitation feedback acts to amplify precipitation and soil moisture deficits in most regions. CMIP5 models further show that the frequency of concurrent soil drought and atmospheric aridity enhanced by land–atmosphere feedbacks is projected to increase in the 21st century. Importantly, land–atmosphere feedbacks will greatly increase the intensity of both soil drought and atmospheric aridity beyond that expected from changes in mean climate alone.
Journal Article