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Testing, contact tracing, and isolation (TTI) is an epidemic management and control approach that is difficult to implement at scale because it relies on manual tracing of contacts. Exposure notification apps have been developed to digitally scale up TTI by harnessing contact data obtained from mobile devices; however, exposure notification apps provide users only with limited binary information when they have been directly exposed to a known infection source. Here we demonstrate a scalable improvement to TTI and exposure notification apps that uses data assimilation (DA) on a contact network. Network DA exploits diverse sources of health data together with the proximity data from mobile devices that exposure notification apps rely upon. It provides users with continuously assessed individual risks of exposure and infection, which can form the basis for targeting individual contact interventions. Simulations of the early COVID-19 epidemic in New York City are used to establish proof-of-concept. In the simulations, network DA identifies up to a factor 2 more infections than contact tracing when both harness the same contact data and diagnostic test data. This remains true even when only a relatively small fraction of the population uses network DA. When a sufficiently large fraction of the population (≳ 75%) uses network DA and complies with individual contact interventions, targeting contact interventions with network DA reduces deaths by up to a factor 4 relative to TTI. Network DA can be implemented by expanding the computational backend of existing exposure notification apps, thus greatly enhancing their capabilities. Implemented at scale, it has the potential to precisely and effectively control future epidemics while minimizing economic disruption. 

Abstract Between 5% and 25% of the total momentum transferred between the atmosphere and ocean is transmitted via the growth of long surface gravity waves called “swell.” In this paper, we use large-eddy simulations to show that swell-transmitted momentum excites near-inertial waves and drives turbulent mixing that deepens a rotating, stratified, turbulent ocean surface boundary layer. We find that swell-transmitted currents are less effective at producing turbulence and mixing the boundary layer than currents driven by an effective surface stress. Overall, however, the differences between swell-driven and surface-stress-driven boundary layers are relatively minor. In consequence, our results corroborate assumptions made in Earth system models that neglect the vertical structure of swell-transmitted momentum fluxes and instead parameterize all air–sea momentum transfer processes with an effective surface stress. 

We study stimulated generation – the transfer of energy from balanced flows to existing internal waves – using an asymptotic model that couples barotropic quasi-geostrophic flow and near-inertial waves with $\text{e}^{\text{i}mz}$ vertical structure, where $m$ is the vertical wavenumber and $z$ is the vertical coordinate. A detailed description of the conservation laws of this vertical-plane-wave model illuminates the mechanism of stimulated generation associated with vertical vorticity and lateral strain. There are two sources of wave potential energy, and corresponding sinks of balanced kinetic energy: the refractive convergence of wave action density into anti-cyclones (and divergence from cyclones); and the enhancement of wave-field gradients by geostrophic straining. We quantify these energy transfers and describe the phenomenology of stimulated generation using numerical solutions of an initially uniform inertial oscillation interacting with mature freely evolving two-dimensional turbulence. In all solutions, stimulated generation co-exists with a transfer of balanced kinetic energy to large scales via vortex merging. Also, geostrophic straining accounts for most of the generation of wave potential energy, representing a sink of 10 %–20 % of the initial balanced kinetic energy. However, refraction is fundamental because it creates the initial eddy-scale lateral gradients in the near-inertial field that are then enhanced by advection. In these quasi-inviscid solutions, wave dispersion is the only mechanism that upsets stimulated generation: with a barotropic balanced flow, lateral straining enhances the wave group velocity, so that waves accelerate and rapidly escape from straining regions. This wave escape prevents wave energy from cascading to dissipative scales. 

We describe a process called “squeeze dispersion” in which the squeezing of oceanic tracer gradients by waves, eddies, and bathymetric flow modulates diapycnal diffusion by centimeter to meter‐scale turbulence. Due to squeeze dispersion, the effective diapycnal diffusivity of oceanic tracers is different and typically greater than the average “local” diffusivity, especially when local diffusivity correlates with squeezing. We develop a theory to quantify the effects of squeeze dispersion on diapycnal oceanic transport, finding formulas that connect density‐averaged tracer flux, locally measured diffusivity, large‐scale oceanic strain, the thickness‐weighted average buoyancy gradient, and the effective diffusivity of oceanic tracers. We use this effective diffusivity to interpret observations of abyssal flow through the Samoan Passage reported by Alford et al. (2013,https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50684) and find that squeezing modulates diapycnal tracer dispersion by factors between 0.5 and 3.