Extreme weather events affect the development and survival of disease pathogens and vectors. Our aim was to investigate the potential effects of heat waves on the population dynamics of Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), which is a major vector of dengue and Zika viruses. We modeled the population abundance of blood-fed mosquito adults based on a mechanistic population model of Ae. albopictus with the consideration of diapause. Using simulated heat wave events derived from a 35-year historical dataset, we assessed how the mosquito population responded to different heat wave characteristics, including the onset day, duration, and the average temperature. Two important observations are made: (1) a heat wave event facilitates the population growth in the early development phase but tends to have an overall inhibitive effect; and (2) two primary factors affecting the development are the unusual onset time of a heat wave and a relatively high temperature over an extended period. We also performed a sensitivity analysis using different heat wave definitions, justifying the robustness of the findings. The study suggests that particular attention should be paid to future heat wave events with an abnormal onset time or a lasting high temperature in order to develop effective strategies to prevent and control Ae. albopictus-borne diseases. Understanding the population dynamics of Asian Tiger mosquito (Ae. albopictus)–the most prevalent vector of global epidemics including West Nile virus, dengue fever, Zika–could shed lights on improving the understanding of vector transmission as well as developing effective disease control strategies. It is widely acknowledged that the life cycle of Ae. albopictus is firmly regulated by meteorological factors in a non-linear way and is sensitive to climate change. Our study extends the understanding about how extreme heat events manipulate the mosquito population abundance. We adopted an existing mechanistic population model of Ae. albopictus, combined with a rich set of simulated heat wave events derived from a 35-year historical dataset, to quantify the mosquito’s responses to different heat wave characteristics. We found that an abnormal onset time and a lasting high temperature play the most important role in affecting the mosquito population dynamics. We also performed a sensitive analysis by changing the definition of the heat wave, justifying the rigor of the conclusion. This research provides implications for developing public health intervention strategies: to control dengue fever, Zika, as well as other far-reaching mosquito-borne epidemics, priority should be given to heat wave events with an abnormal onset time or a lasting high temperature.

Global warming has a marked influence on the life cycle of epidemic vectors as well as their interactions with human beings. The Aedes albopictus mosquito as the vector of dengue fever surged exponentially in the last decade, raising ecological and epistemological concerns of how climate change altered its growth rate and population dynamics. As the global warming pattern is considerably uneven across four seasons, with a confirmed stronger effect in winter, an emerging need arises as to exploring how the seasonal warming effects influence the annual development of Ae. albopictus. The model consolidates a 35-year climate dataset and designs fifteen warming patterns that increase the temperature of selected seasons. Based on a recently developed mechanistic population model of Ae. albopictus, the model simulates the thermal reaction of blood-fed adults by systematically increasing the temperature from 0.5 to 5 °C at an interval of 0.5 °C in each warming pattern. The results show the warming effects are different across seasons. The warming effects in spring and winter facilitate the development of the species by shortening the diapause period. The warming effect in summer is primarily negative by inhibiting mosquito development. The warming effect in autumn is considerably mixed. However, these warming effects cannot carry over to the following year, possibly due to the fact that under the extreme weather in winter the mosquito fully ceases from development and survives in terms of diapause eggs. As the historical pattern of global warming manifests seasonal fluctuations, this study provides corroborating and previously ignored evidence of how such seasonality affects the mosquito development. Understanding this short-term temperature-driven mechanism as one chain of the transmission events is critical to refining the thermal reaction norms of the epidemic vector under global warming as well as developing effective mosquito prevention and control strategies.

High-resolution nighttime light (NTL) satellite images are needed for monitoring human activities and socioeconomic dynamics at fine scales, but such NTL data are very limited. On June 11, 2021, China launched the Yangwang-1 (“Look Up 1”) satellite, which is a small optical space telescope that detects near-earth asteroids, but its visible band sensor can also collect NTL images. It provides a new fine-scale NTL data source. This study assessed the quality and capability of Yangwang-1 NTL imagery for capturing artificial lights. The results show that Yangwang-1 has equivalent quality with the state of the art in NTL remote sensing (e.g., Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Luojia-1) and some aspects are even better. Specifically, Yangwang-1 has a higher spatial resolution (38 m at the nadir), high radiometric consistency with VIIRS ( $R^{2} =0.83$ ), higher sensitivity to low lights than Luojia-1, better image quality in the spatial domain (lower Blind/Referenceless Image Spatial Quality Evaluator (BRISQUE) index than Luojia-1 and VIIRS by 32% and 61%, respectively), and a 420–700 nm broadband that can better detect artificial light and is less influenced by the absorption of the atmosphere. Yangwang-1 NTL data can be applied to various fields, including urban mapping, road network extraction, disaster detection, monitoring light pollution, illegal fishing, fires, and human settlements, and mapping associated energy infrastructures at fine scales.