Recent Trends in Heat-Related Mortality in the United States: An Update Through 2018

Much research has shown a general decrease in the negative health response to extreme heat events in recent decades. With a society that is growing older, and a climate that is warming, whether this trend can continue is an open question. Using eight additional years of mortality data, we extend our previous research to explore trends in heat-related mortality across the United States. For the period 1975–2018, we examined the mortality associated with extreme-heat-event days across the 107 largest metropolitan areas. Mortality response was assessed over a cumulative 10-day lag period following events that were defined using thresholds of the excess heat factor, using a distributed-lag nonlinear model. We analyzed total mortality and subsets of age and sex. Our results show that in the past decade there is heterogeneity in the trends of heat-related human mortality. The decrease in heat vulnerability continues among those 65 and older across most of the country, which may be associated with improved messaging and increased awareness. These decreases are offset in many locations by an increase in mortality among men 45–64 (+1.3 deaths per year), particularly across parts of the southern and southwestern United States. As heat-warning messaging broadly identifies the elderly as the most vulnerable group, the results here suggest that differences in risk perception may play a role. Further, an increase in the number of heat events over the past decade across the United States may have contributed to the end of a decades-long downward trend in the estimated number of heat-related fatalities

Heat/mortality sensitivities in Los Angeles during winter: A unique phenomenon in the United States

Background: Extreme heat is often associated with elevated levels of human mortality, particularly across the mid-latitudes. Los Angeles, CA exhibits a unique, highly variable winter climate, with brief periods of intense heat caused by downsloping winds commonly known as Santa Ana winds. The goal is to determine if Los Angeles County is susceptible to heat-related mortality during the winter season. This is the first study to specifically evaluate heat-related mortality during the winter for a U.S. city. Methods: Utilizing the Spatial Synoptic Classification system in Los Angeles County from 1979 through 2010, we first relate daily human mortality to synoptic air mass type during the winter season (December, January, February) using Welch\u27s t-tests. However, this methodology is only somewhat effective at controlling for important inter- and intra-annual trends in human mortality unrelated to heat such as influenza outbreaks. As a result, we use distributed lag nonlinear modeling (DLNM) to evaluate if the relative risk of human mortality increases during higher temperatures in Los Angeles, as the DLNM is more effective at controlling for variability at multiple temporal scales within the human mortality dataset. Results: Significantly higher human mortality is uncovered in winter when dry tropical air is present in Los Angeles, particularly among those 65 years and older (p \u3c 0.001). The DLNM reveals the relative risk of human mortality increases when above average temperatures are present. Results are especially pronounced for maximum and mean temperatures, along with total mortality and those 65 +. Conclusions: The discovery of heat-related mortality in winter is a unique finding in the United States, and we recommend stakeholders consider warning and intervention techniques to mitigate the role of winter heat on human health in the County

Atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters: insensitivity to initial conditions

The ongoing characterization of hot Jupiters has motivated a variety of circulation models of their atmospheres. Such models must be integrated starting from an assumed initial state, which is typically taken to be a wind-free, rest state. Here, we investigate the sensitivity of hot-Jupiter atmospheric circulation models to initial conditions. We consider two classes of models--shallow-water models, which have proven successful at illuminating the dynamical mechanisms at play on these planets, and full three-dimensional models similar to those being explored in the literature. Models are initialized with zonal jets, and we explore a variety of different initial jet profiles. We demonstrate that, in both classes of models, the final, equilibrated state is independent of initial condition--as long as frictional drag near the bottom of the domain and/or interaction with a specified planetary interior are included so that the atmosphere can adjust angular momentum over time relative to the interior. When such mechanisms are included, otherwise identical models initialized with vastly different initial conditions all converge to the same statistical steady state. In some cases, the models exhibit modest time variability; this variability results in random fluctuations about the statistical steady state, but we emphasize that, even in these cases, the statistical steady state itself does not depend on initial conditions. Although the outcome of hot-Jupiter circulation models depend on details of the radiative forcing and frictional drag, aspects of which remain uncertain, we conclude that the specification of initial conditions is not a source of uncertainty, at least over the parameter range explored in most current models.Comment: Revised version; accepted and published. 16 pages, 16 figure

Using airborne and DESIS imaging spectroscopy to map plant diversity across the largest contiguous tract of tallgrass prairie on earth

Grassland ecosystems are under threat globally, primarily due to land-use and land-cover changes that have adversely affected their biodiversity. Given the negative ecological impacts of biodiversity loss in grasslands, there is an urgent need for developing an operational biodiversity monitoring system that functions in these ecosystems. In this paper, we assessed the capability of airborne and spaceborne imaging spectroscopy (also known as hyperspectral imaging) to capture plant α-diversity in a large naturally-assembled grassland while considering the impact of common management practices, specifically prescribed fire. We collected a robust insitu plant diversity data set, including species composition and percent cover from 2500 sampling points with different burn ages, from recently-burned to transitional and pre-prescribed fire at the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma, USA. We expressed in-situ plant α-diversity using the first three Hill numbers, including species richness (number of observed species in a plant community), exponential Shannon entropy index (hereafter Shannon diversity; effective number of common species, where species are weighed proportional to their percent cover), and inverse Simpson concentration index (hereafter Simpson diversity; effective number of dominant species, where more weight is given to dominant species) at four different plot sizes, including 60 m × 60 m, 120 m × 120 m, 180 m × 180 m, and 240 m × 240 m. We collected full-range airborne hyperspectral data with fine spatial resolution (1 m) and visible and near-infrared spaceborne hyperspectral data from DESIS sensor with coarse spatial resolution (30 m), and used the spectral diversity hypothesis— i.e., that the variability in spectral data is largely driven by plant diversity—to estimate α-diversity remotely. In recently-burned plots and those at the transitional stage, both airborne and spaceborne data were capable of capturing Simpson diversity—a metric that calculates the effective number of dominant species by emphasizing abundant species and discounting rare species—but not species richness or Shannon diversity. Further, neither airborne nor spaceborne hyperspectral data sets were capable of capturing plant α-diversity of 60 m × 60 m or 120 m × 120 m plots. Based on these results, three main findings emerged: (1) management practices influence grassland biodiversity patterns that can be remotely detected, (2) both fine- and coarse-resolution remotely-sensed data can detect the effective number of dominant species (e.g., Simpson diversity), and (3) attention should be given to site-specific plant diversity field data collection to appropriately interpret remote sensing results. Findings of this study indicate the feasibility of estimating Simpson diversity in naturally-assembled grasslands using forthcoming spaceborne imagers such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Surface Biology and Geology mission

Atmospheric Circulation of Eccentric Hot Neptune GJ436b

GJ436b is a unique member of the transiting extrasolar planet population being one of the smallest and least irradiated and possessing an eccentric orbit. Because of its size, mass and density, GJ436b could plausibly have an atmospheric metallicity similar to Neptune (20-60 times solar abundances), which makes it an ideal target to study the effects of atmospheric metallicity on dynamics and radiative transfer in an extrasolar planetary atmosphere. We present three-dimensional atmospheric circulation models that include realistic non-gray radiative transfer for 1, 3, 10, 30, and 50 times solar atmospheric metallicity cases of GJ436b. Low metallicity models (1 and 3 times solar) show little day/night temperature variation and strong high-latitude jets. In contrast, higher metallicity models (30 and 50 times solar) exhibit day/night temperature variations and a strong equatorial jet. Spectra and light curves produced from these simulations show strong orbital phase dependencies in the 50 times solar case and negligible variations with orbital phase in the 1 times solar case. Comparisons between the predicted planet/star flux ratio from these models and current secondary eclipse measurements support a high metallicity atmosphere (30-50 times solar abundances) with disequilibrium carbon chemistry at play for GJ436b. Regardless of the actual atmospheric composition of GJ436b, our models serve to illuminate how metallicity influences the atmospheric circulation for a broad range of warm extrasolar planets.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figure

Equatorial Superrotation on Tidally Locked Exoplanets

The increasing richness of exoplanet observations has motivated a variety of three-dimensional (3D) atmospheric circulation models of these planets. Under strongly irradiated conditions, models of tidally locked, short-period planets (both hot Jupiters and terrestrial planets) tend to exhibit a circulation dominated by a fast eastward, or "superrotating," jet stream at the equator. When the radiative and advection timescales are comparable, this phenomenon can cause the hottest regions to be displaced eastward from the substellar point by tens of degrees longitude. Such an offset has been subsequently observed on HD 189733b, supporting the possibility of equatorial jets on short-period exoplanets. Despite its relevance, however, the dynamical mechanisms responsible for generating the equatorial superrotation in such models have not been identified. Here, we show that the equatorial jet results from the interaction of the mean flow with standing Rossby waves induced by the day-night thermal forcing. The strong longitudinal variations in radiative heating—namely intense dayside heating and nightside cooling—trigger the formation of standing, planetary-scale equatorial Rossby and Kelvin waves. The Rossby waves develop phase tilts that pump eastward momentum from high latitudes to the equator, thereby inducing equatorial superrotation. We present an analytic theory demonstrating this mechanism and explore its properties in a hierarchy of one-layer (shallow-water) calculations and fully 3D models. The wave-mean-flow interaction produces an equatorial jet whose latitudinal width is comparable to that of the Rossby waves, namely the equatorial Rossby deformation radius modified by radiative and frictional effects. For conditions typical of synchronously rotating hot Jupiters, this length is comparable to a planetary radius, explaining the broad scale of the equatorial jet obtained in most hot-Jupiter models. Our theory illuminates the dependence of the equatorial jet speed on forcing amplitude, strength of friction, and other parameters, as well as the conditions under which jets can form at all

Microscopic Theory of Heterogeneity and Non-Exponential Relaxations in Supercooled Liquids

Recent experiments and computer simulations show that supercooled liquids around the glass transition temperature are "dynamically heterogeneous" [1]. Such heterogeneity is expected from the random first order transition theory of the glass transition. Using a microscopic approach based on this theory, we derive a relation between the departure from Debye relaxation as characterized by the $\beta$ value of a stretched exponential response function $\phi(t) =e^{-(t/ \tau_{KWW})^{\beta}}$, and the fragility of the liquid. The $\beta$ value is also predicted to depend on temperature and to vanish as the ideal glass transition is approached at the Kauzmann temperature.Comment: 4 pages including 3 eps figure

Slow dynamics near glass transitions in thin polymer films

The $\alpha$-process (segmental motion) of thin polystyrene films supported on glass substrate has been investigated in a wider frequency range from 10$^{-3}$ Hz to 10$^4$ Hz using dielectric relaxation spectroscopy and thermal expansion spectroscopy. The relaxation rate of the $\alpha$-process increases with decreasing film thickness at a given temperature above the glass transition. This increase in the relaxation rate with decreasing film thickness is much more enhanced near the glass transition temperature. The glass transition temperature determined as the temperature at which the relaxation time of the $\alpha$-process becomes a macroscopic time scale shows a distinct molecular weight dependence. It is also found that the Vogel temperature has the thickness dependence, i.e., the Vogel temperature decreases with decreasing film thickness. The expansion coefficient of the free volume $\alpha_f$ is extracted from the temperature dependence of the relaxation time within the free volume theory. The fragility index $m$ is also evaluated as a function of thickness. Both $\alpha_f$ and $m$ are found to decrease with decreasing film thickness.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, and 2 table

Atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters: Coupled radiative-dynamical general circulation model simulations of HD 189733b and HD 209458b

We present global, three-dimensional numerical simulations of HD 189733b and HD 209458b that couple the atmospheric dynamics to a realistic representation of non-gray cloud-free radiative transfer. The model, which we call the Substellar and Planetary Atmospheric Radiation and Circulation (SPARC) model, adopts the MITgcm for the dynamics and uses the radiative model of McKay, Marley, Fortney, and collaborators for the radiation. Like earlier work with simplified forcing, our simulations develop a broad eastward equatorial jet, mean westward flow at higher latitudes, and substantial flow over the poles at low pressure. For HD 189733b, our simulations without TiO and VO opacity can explain the broad features of the observed 8 and 24-micron light curves, including the modest day-night flux variation and the fact that the planet/star flux ratio peaks before the secondary eclipse. Our simulations also provide reasonable matches to the Spitzer secondary-eclipse depths at 4.5, 5.8, 8, 16, and 24 microns and the groundbased upper limit at 2.2 microns. However, we substantially underpredict the 3.6-micron secondary-eclipse depth, suggesting that our simulations are too cold in the 0.1-1 bar region. Predicted temporal variability in secondary-eclipse depths is ~1% at Spitzer bandpasses, consistent with recent observational upper limits at 8 microns. We also show that nonsynchronous rotation can significantly alter the jet structure. For HD 209458b, we include TiO and VO opacity; these simulations develop a hot (>2000 K) dayside stratosphere. Despite this stratosphere, we do not reproduce current Spitzer photometry of this planet. Light curves in Spitzer bandpasses show modest phase variation and satisfy the observational upper limit on day-night phase variation at 8 microns. (abridged)Comment: 20 pages (emulate-apj format), 21 figures, final version now published in ApJ. Includes expanded discussion of radiative-transfer methods and two new figure