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The United States’ National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has accumulated over $20 billion in debt to the US Treasury since 2005, partly due to discounted premiums on homes in flood‐prone areas. To address this issue, FEMA introduced Risk Rating 2.0 in October 2021, which is able to assess and charge more accurate and equitable rates to homeowners. However, rates must be continually updated to account for increasing flood damage caused by sea level rise and more intense hurricanes due to climate change. This study proposes a strategy to adopt updated premium rates that account for climate change effects and address affordability and risk mitigation issues with a means‐tested voucher program. The strategy is tested in a coastal community, Ortley Beach, NJ, by projecting its future flood risk under sea level rise and storm intensification. Compared with using static rates for all the properties in Ortley Beach, the proposed strategy is shown to reduce the NFIP's potential losses to the community from 2020 to 2050 by half (from $4.6 million to $2.3 million), improve the community's flood resistance, and address affordability concerns. Sensitivity analysis of varying incomes, loan interest rates, and conditions for a voucher indicates that the strategy is feasible and effective under a wide range of scenarios. Thus, the proposed strategy can be applied to various communities along the US coastline as an effective way of updating risk‐based premiums while addressing affordability and resilience concerns.

 

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted food systems, health systems and the environment globally, with potentially greater negative effects in many lower-middle income countries (LMICs) including Indonesia. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on diets, health and the marine environment in Indonesia, based on the perspectives of a multidisciplinary group of informants. Methods: We conducted remote in-depth interviews with 27 key informants from many regions of Indonesia, who are either healthcare providers, nutrition researchers or environmental researchers. Interview question guides were developed based on a socio-ecological framework. We analyzed the data using a qualitative content analysis approach. Results: Informants suggested that while the COVID-19 brought increased awareness about and adherence to good nutrition and health behaviors, the impact was transitory. Informants indicated that healthy food options became less affordable, due to job losses and reduced income, suggesting a likely increase in food insecurity and obesity. Environmental researchers described higher levels of marine pollution from increase in hygienic wastes as well as from plastic packaging from food orders. Conclusions: Our findings reveal perceptions by informants that the increased awareness and adherence to health behaviors observed during the pandemic was not sustained. Our results also suggest that the pandemic may have exacerbated the double-burden paradox and marine pollution in Indonesia. This study offers information for generating hypotheses for quantitative studies to corroborate our findings and inform policies and programs to mitigate the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 on diets, health, and the marine environment in Indonesia. 

As one of the most sensitive areas to climate change, drylands cover ~40% of the Earth’s terrestrial land surface and host more than 38% of the global population. Meanwhile, their response to climate change and variability carries large uncertainties as induced by background climate, topography, and land cover composition; but there is a lack of intercomparison of different dryland ecosystems. In this study, we compare the changing climate and corresponding responses of major natural vegetation cover types in Xinjiang and Arizona, two typical drylands with similar landscapes in Asia and North America. Long-term (2002–2019) quasi-8-day datasets of daily precipitation, daily mean temperature, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were constructed based on station observations and remote sensing products. We found that much of Xinjiang experienced warming and wetting trends (although not co-located) over the past 18 years. In contrast, Arizona was dominated by warming with insignificant wetting or drying trends. Significant greening trends were observed in most parts of both study areas, while the increasing rate of NDVI anomalies was relatively higher in Xinjiang, jointly contributed by its colder and drier conditions. Significant degradation of vegetation growth (especially for shrubland) was observed over 18.8% of Arizona due to warming. Our results suggest that responses of similar natural vegetation types under changing climate can be diversified, as controlled by temperature and moisture in areas with different aridity. 

We design and experimentally demonstrate a polarizing beam splitter (PBS) on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform based on an asymmetric directional coupler. The asymmetric directional coupler consists of a regular strip waveguide and a sub-wavelength grating (SWG) waveguide. Engineering the waveguide dispersion via SWG, the phase-matching condition can be satisfied for TM polarization over a broad bandwidth when the waveguide dimensions are optimized. The coupling region of the realized PBS is ∼7.2 µm long. For the fabricated PBS, the polarization extinction ratio (PER) is 10–45 dB and the insertion loss is 0.3–2.5 dB for TM polarization while the PER is 14–22 dB and the insertion loss is < 0.6 dB for TE polarization when operating in the wavelength range of 1460 –1610 nm.

 

Aerosols have significant and complex impacts on regional climate in East Asia. Cloud‐aerosol‐precipitation interactions (CAPI) remain most challenging in climate studies. The quantitative understanding of CAPI requires good knowledge of aerosols, ranging from their formation, composition, transport, and their radiative, hygroscopic, and microphysical properties. A comprehensive review is presented here centered on the CAPI based chiefly, but not limited to, publications in the special section named EAST‐AIRcpc concerning (1) observations of aerosol loading and properties, (2) relationships between aerosols and meteorological variables affecting CAPI, (3) mechanisms behind CAPI, and (4) quantification of CAPI and their impact on climate. Heavy aerosol loading in East Asia has significant radiative effects by reducing surface radiation, increasing the air temperature, and lowering the boundary layer height. A key factor is aerosol absorption, which is particularly strong in central China. This absorption can have a wide range of impacts such as creating an imbalance of aerosol radiative forcing at the top and bottom of the atmosphere, leading to inconsistent retrievals of cloud variables from space‐borne and ground‐based instruments. Aerosol radiative forcing can delay or suppress the initiation and development of convective clouds whose microphysics can be further altered by the microphysical effect of aerosols. For the same cloud thickness, the likelihood of precipitation is influenced by aerosols: suppressing light rain and enhancing heavy rain, delaying but intensifying thunderstorms, and reducing the onset of isolated showers in most parts of China. Rainfall has become more inhomogeneous and more extreme in the heavily polluted urban regions.