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AbstractWaves overtop berms and seawalls along the shoreline of Imperial Beach (IB), CA when energetic winter swell and high tide coincide. These intermittent, few-hour long events flood low-lying areas and pose a growing inundation risk as sea levels rise. To support city flood response and management, an IB flood warning system was developed. Total water level (TWL) forecasts combine predictions of tides and sea-level anomalies with wave runup estimates based on incident wave forecasts and the nonlinear wave model SWASH. In contrast to widely used empirical runup formulas that rely on significant wave height and peak period, and use only a foreshore slope for bathymetry, the SWASH model incorporates spectral incident wave forcing and uses the cross-shore depth profile. TWL forecasts using a SWASH emulator demonstrate skill several days in advance. Observations set TWL thresholds for minor and moderate flooding. The specific wave and water level conditions that lead to flooding, and key contributors to TWL uncertainty, are identified. TWL forecast skill is reduced by errors in the incident wave forecast and the one-dimensional runup model, and lack of information of variable beach morphology (e.g., protective sand berms can erode during storms). Model errors are largest for the most extreme events. Without mitigation, projected sea-level rise will substantially increase the duration and severity of street flooding. Application of the warning system approach to other locations requires incident wave hindcasts and forecasts, numerical simulation of the runup associated with local storms and beach morphology, and model calibration with flood observations.

Surface wind speed retrievals have been generated and evaluated using Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) measurements from flights over Hurricane Joaquin, Hurricane Patricia, Hurricane Marty, and the remnants of Tropical Storm Erika, all in 2015. Procedures are described here for producing maps of brightness temperature, which are subsequently used for retrievals of surface wind speed and rain rate across a ~50 km wide swath for each flight leg. An iterative retrieval approach has been developed to take advantage of HIRAD's measurement characteristics. Validation of the wind speed retrievals has been conducted, using 636 dropsondes released from the same WB-57 high altitude aircraft carrying HIRAD during the Tropical Cyclone Intensity (TCI) experiment. The HIRAD wind speed retrievals exhibit very small bias relative to the dropsondes, for winds tropical storm strength (17.5 m s-1) or greater. HIRAD has reduced sensitivity to winds weaker than tropical storm strength, and a small positive bias (~2 m s-1) there. Two flights with predominantly weak winds according to the dropsondes have abnormally large errors from HIRAD, and large positive biases. From the other flights, root mean square differences between HIRAD and the dropsonde winds are 4.1 m s-1 (33%) for winds below tropical storm strength, 5.6 m s-1 (25%) for tropical storm strength winds, and 6.3 m s-1 (16%) for hurricane strength winds. Mean absolute differences for those categories are 3.2 m s-1 (25%), 4.3 m s-1 (19%), and 4.8 m s-1 (12%), with bias near zero for tropical storm and hurricane strength winds.

OF ALL THE GREAT QUESTIONS of Habsburg history, perhaps the greatest is this: What would have been the consequence ir Charles V had decided to prioritize differently his dealings with [...]

by Enrique Garcia Hernan (Madrid: Ed. del Laberinto, 2000; pp. 286. Pb. n.p.). Die Beziehungen zwischen Spanien und Irland im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Diplomatie, Handel und die soziale Integration [...]

The effect of a Macrocystis kelp forest on shoreward propagating surface gravity waves was measured. Observations were made over a 67-day period at four locations around a 350-m-wide kelp bed off Carlsbad, California. Instruments were located directly offshore and onshore of the kelp bed at depths of 13 m and 8 m, respectively, and at control stations at the same depths, but displaced 750 m alongshore, away from the kelp bed. The bathymetry between the offshore and onshore sites was gently sloping and featureless. The measured spectra, significant wave height, mean wave direction at peak frequency, and total radiation stress differed only slightly between the offshore kelp and control stations and were similar at the onshore sites. The similarity of the wave field at the onshore kelp and control sites shows that this typical southern California kelp bed, with an average density of about 10 plants per 100 [m.sup.2], does not have a significant effect on waves. These measurements can be used to place upper bounds on drag coefficients in numerical models of the effect of kelp on waves.

Kuzmics, Helmut and Roland Axtmann. Authority, State and National Character: The Civilizing Process in Austria and England, 1700-1900. Studies in European Cultural Transition 36. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. 363. [...]

The article focuses on Habsburg Europe in a broader age of colonialism and imperialism can learn from engaging with considerations of scale and structural changes wrought by globalisation in political, social, economic, cultural, scientific and other areas. It mentions possibility and reality of movement and change with social stratification of the time. It also mentions Habsburg Monarchy's expansion towards Eastern Europe as comparable to other empires' colonial ventures overseas.

This article considers the actions of migrant recruiters who organised the movement of people in Europe in the early modern period and thereafter. Recruiters were responsible for the systemisation of migration and their actions resulted in a competition in the European labour market which prompted state-level responses to emigration and immigration, and to people on the move. Europeans encountered opportunities to emigrate through their interactions with recruiters and by reading about life abroad; travel and travel writing brought people face to face with curiosity and wonder. Stories of life abroad were collected, categorised, and brought home and migrant recruiters exploited the growing curiosity about the wider world. Recruiters aided migrants in reaching a decision to leave and an examination of their actions and motivations aids in understanding the origins of large-scale migration in the nineteenth century and after. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the research strategies employed by historians, economists, political scientists, and others when assessing human movement both at present and in the past. Migration systems are replete with long-established migration paths as well as anomalous events. Yet historians regularly fail to engage with questions of motivation for migration, how migrants reach a decision on when and where to go, how agents and agencies of migration aid or inhibit efforts to relocate, and how risk is a significant factor in decision making regarding migration. This article critically reviews a range of approaches from other disciplines and assesses the value for historians of considering a range of theories concerning risk and risk management in assessing how migrants in the past - and today - make the decision to uproot. This study is a contribution to the historiography of migration studies and calls for historians to approach the history of human movement in a more interdisciplinary way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside the long-term migration systems that developed between Europe and the Americas, Atlantic migration history is replete with anomalous events—migration "fevers" that lie outside well-described norms in migratory processes. Prospect theory finds risk-seeking behavior to have been a compelling pre-condition for two instances of such migration fever in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as for their subsequent cascade effects, creating a social dynamic of "irrational" migration. Prospect theory provides a testable framework for understanding why and how short-lived migration episodes acquired so much force and intensity and points toward a broader relationship with accepted decision-making structures in migration studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]