HR: 11:25h
AN: U31D-04    [PDF]
TI: Urban Climate, Ozone Formation, and Public Health: Should Heat be Regulated as a Traditional Air Pollutant?
AU: * Stone, B
EM: bjstone@wisc.edu
AF: University of Wiscosin-Madison, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning 925 Bascom Mall / Old Music Hall, Madison, WI 53726 United States
AB: The return of record breaking heat waves to North American and European cities in 2003 highlights the growing need for urban planners to develop heat mitigation strategies for large metropolitan regions. Long associated with public health through its effects on human heat stress and heat related mortality, rising urban temperatures also hold important implications for regional air quality. This presentation will outline the results of a study focused on the relationship between regional temperatures and annual tropospheric ozone exceedances in the fifty largest (by population) metropolitan regions in the United States. With the aid of data from the EPA's National Emissions Inventory and NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System, this study examines trends in metropolitan emissions of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, mean regional temperatures, and annual ozone exceedances in U.S. metropolitan regions for the years 1990 through 1999. The intent of this work is to better establish connections between recent trends urban climate and ozone formation and to explore policy approaches to mitigating urban temperatures through physical planning. The results of this research indicate that annual violations of the national ozone standard during the decade of the 1990s were more closely associated with regional temperatures than with the emissions of regulated ozone precursors from mobile and stationary sources. Based on the results of this analysis, I argue that the air quality management strategies outlined in the Clean Air Act may be proving insufficient to control ozone formation due to ongoing and unanticipated changes in global and regional climate. I further argue that the emergence of urban heat as a significant threat to human health demands a strategic response from the fields of urban planning and public health. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of the linkages between urban form and ambient heat and will outline a set of policy approaches that have proven successful in mitigating urban heat production.
DE: 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
DE: 6334 Regional planning
DE: 6615 Legislation and regulation
SC: U
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting