HR: 08:20h
AN: U31A-02 INVITED     [PDF]
TI: Health Impacts of Air Pollution Under a Changing Climate
AU: * Kinney, P L
EM: plk3@columbia.edu
AF: Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environ Health Sci,60 Haven Ave., B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Knowlton, K
AF: Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environ Health Sci,60 Haven Ave., B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Rosenthal, J
AF: Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environ Health Sci,60 Haven Ave., B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Hogrefe, C
AF: Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of NY, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-3259
AU: Rosenzweig, C
AF: NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025
AU: Solecki, W
AF: Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
AB: Outdoor air pollution remains a serious public health problem in cities throughout the world. In the US, despite considerable progress in reducing emissions over the past 30 years, as many as 50,000 premature deaths each year have been attributed to airborne particulate matter alone. Tropospheric ozone has been associated with increased daily mortality and hospitalization rates, and with a variety of related respiratory problems. Weather plays an important role in the transport and transformation of air pollution. In particular, a warming climate is likely to promote the atmospheric reactions that are responsible for ozone and secondary aerosol production, as well as increasing emissions of many of their volatile precursors. Increasingly, efforts to address urban air pollution problems throughout the world will be complicated by trends and variability in climate. The New York Climate and Health Project (NYCHP) is developing and applying tools for integrated assessment of health impacts from air pollution and heat associated with climate and land-use changes in the New York City metropolitan region. Global climate change is modeled over the 21st century based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 greenhouse gas emissions scenario using the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Global Atmosphere-Ocean Model (GCM). Meteorological fields are downscaled to a 36 km grid over the eastern US using the Penn State/NCAR MM5 mesoscale meteorological model. MM5 results are then used as input to the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for simulating air quality, with emissions based on the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions Modeling System (SMOKE). To date, simulations have been performed for five summer seasons each during the 1990s and the 2050s. An evaluation of the present-day climate and air quality predictions indicates that the modeling system largely captures the observed climate-ozone system. Analysis of future-year predictions shows an increase in temperature and humidity as well as mean and extreme ozone concentrations under the IPCC A2 emission scenario. To address public health impacts, a risk assessment framework is used to estimate ozone-related mortality in the region, with a focus on comparing health impact estimates for the 1990s versus the 2050s. This endpoint represents a potentially appreciable public health impact resulting from climate change-induced alterations in regional air quality profiles. Concentration-response functions from the epidemiological literature describing ozone-mortality relationships are used to estimate numbers of regional deaths in a typical 1990s summer and a typical 2050s summer. Preliminary analysis of future-year ozone-related mortality suggests a subtle increase in the number of summer ozone-related deaths in the New York region in the 2050s as compared to the 1990s. A parallel evaluation of heat-related mortality in a typical summer of the 2050s suggests a greater relative increase as compared to the 1990s, with a doubling to tripling of regional summer heat deaths possible by the 2050s.
DE: 0345 Pollution--urban and regional (0305)
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 6304 Benefit-cost analysis
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
SC: U
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting