Will Thurston

Fantastic news, congratulations!!

... Exodus 10:19 -- "And the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt"

Windborne migration of locusts in the Old Testament. Exodus 10:13 -- "So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts" ...

At least an area the size of Wales!! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Improving vertical detail in simulated temperature and humidity data using machine learning There are atmospheric phenomena that occur on scales smaller than the thickness of model layers. The formation of low-level clouds due to temperature inversions is an example. Using radiosonde observ....

Not quite the question you are asking, but related nonetheless rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Of course the ECMWF isn't an "EU operation", and has UK, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Turkey as Member States (whereas Poland *isn't* an ECMWF Member State, and several other EU countries are only Co-operating States of the ECMWF)

Can compare notes with my "hotpot and carrots" a couple of weeks ago. Couldn't face photographing the chicken accompanied by sprouts the following evening, which may well have been cooked by the same chef that did your broccoli...

Quite the tease... 😆 Do you have anything up on the arXiv yet??

Colliding, or leaning in for a kiss?

This international surveillance project aims to protect wheat from deadly diseases Backed by the Gates Foundation, the Wheat Disease Early Warning Advisory System is on the front lines, looking for early signals of crop-killing rust infections.

NAME dispersion-model predictions of the spread of fungal spores are a key part of this multi-agency early warning and advisory system for diseases of wheat www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/26/1...

A framework for modelling desert locust population dynamics and large-scale dispersal Author summary There is a critical need for tools that can help manage and predict the spread of transboundary pests, especially the desert locust, one of the most destructive pests for smallholder fa...

By using concepts from epidemiological modelling, we (@camplantsci.bsky.social, @metoffice.bsky.social and @fao.org) have developed an integrated modelling framework for doing just this!

Paper (open access): journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Press release: phys.org/news/2024-12...

How do you combine simple atmospheric dispersion modelling trajectories like this with environmental data and population biology knowledge to make short- and long-term predictions of desert locust swarm migration?

Back from 2 days at the UK vector-borne disease @ukvbd.bsky.social conference in Liverpool, where I discovered i) how little I understand about biology, but ii) how keen everyone else was to learn about atmospheric dispersion modelling. Thanks @baylism.bsky.social et al for bringing us all together!

"Miso-scale" convection

Good timing - bsky.app/profile/eloq...

Thanks for sharing, mind blown! I had no idea about that, despite being a CASE student at POL many, err, moons ago!!

Not for planet Earth, but this does paper does it for Proxima Centauri B, but using the Unified Model as used by @metoffice.bsky.social for NWP and climate modelling! www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

Maps of deposition of stripe rust spores from NAME simulations using sources generated from crop disease surveys within Nepal (top) and sources generated from automated media scraping in India and Pakistan (bottom)

How do you forecast the arrival of devastating crop diseases spread by fungal spores, blown 1000s of km on the wind and from countries in which you don't have knowledge of crop disease surveys? Use automated media scraping to generate proxy observations! rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Chief Vet reminds farmers of bluetongue risk Farmers urged to take up free testing and source livestock responsibly as case numbers increasing in Europe

This is unsurprising given the proximity to the east coast (≈ 10 km), the huge increase in BTV-3 cases on the near-continent over the past month, and the recent warnings issued over the risk of airborne incursions into Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent and East Sussex www.gov.uk/government/n...

20-km Temporary Control Zone in South Norfolk and high-risk counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent and East Sussex

Today the first UK bluetongue virus serotype 3 (BTV-3) case of the summer was confirmed, in a single symptomatic sheep on a farm near Haddiscoe, South Norfolk. A 20-km Temporary Control Zone (TCZ) has been declared around the premises www.gov.uk/animal-disea...