BACKGROUND Warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are positively related to incidence of ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP). Increased severe storm frequency may create more habitat for ciguatoxic organisms. Although climate change could expand the endemic range of CFP, the relationship between CFP incidence and specific environmental conditions is unknown. OBJECTIVES We estimated associations betw...

One of the more important questions in hydrology is: if the climate warms in the future, will there be an intensification of the water cycle and, if so, the nature of that intensification? There is considerable interest in this question because an intensification of the water cycle may lead to changes in water-resource availability, an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms,...

Extant theoretical work on the steady-state structure and intensity of idealized axisymmetric tropical cyclones relies on the assumption that isentropic surfaces in the storm outflow match those of the unperturbed environment at large distances from the storm’s core. These isentropic surfaces generally lie just above the tropopause, where the vertical temperature structure is approximately isot...

Tropical cyclones are relatively rare weather events, yet they consistently rank among the world’s deadliest and costliest natural hazards. In the United States, tropical cyclones account for nearly $10 billion annually in economic damages (1), and damages from Hurricane Sandy (2012) are estimated to be over $50 billion. Understanding the role of these events within Earth’s climate system is of...

Vibrio spp. are ubiquitous members of aquatic microbial food webs that can be pathogenic to humans and a range of other organisms. Previously published predictive models for Vibrio spp. concentrations in estuarine and coastal waters, based only on salinity and temperature, are 70 to 75% accurate during ‘normal’ conditions (e.g. not during storms or drought). We have conducted a preliminary comp...

Exponential family statistical distributions, including the well-known Normal, Binomial, Poisson, and exponential distributions, are overwhelmingly used in data analysis. In the presence of covariates, an exponential family distributional assumption for the response random variables results in a generalized linear model. However, it is rarely ensured that the parameters of the assumed distribut...