HR: 1330h
AN: U32A-0028    [PDF]
TI: Assessing Public Health Impacts of Heat and Air Quality Under a Changing Climate in the New York City Metropolitan Area
AU: * Knowlton, K
EM: kmk47@columbia.edu
AF: Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, 60 Haven Avenue, Floor B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Kinney, P L
EM: plk3@columbia.edu
AF: Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, 60 Haven Avenue, Floor B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Rosenthal, J E
EM: jr438@columbia.edu
AF: Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, 60 Haven Avenue, Floor B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Lynn, B
EM: israelzvilynn@yahoo.com
AF: Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, 60 Haven Avenue, Floor B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Gaffin, S
EM: sgaffin@ciesin.columbia.edu
AF: Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, 60 Haven Avenue, Floor B-1, New York, NY 10032 United States
AU: Hogrefe, C
EM: chogrefe@dec.state.ny.us
AF: Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, University at Albany, 251 Fuller Road, Albany, NY 12203 United States
AU: Biswas, J
EM: jhumoorb@yahoo.com
AF: Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, University at Albany, 251 Fuller Road, Albany, NY 12203 United States
AU: Civerolo, K
EM: kxcivero@gw.dec.state.ny.us
AF: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Bureau of Air Research, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-3259 United States
AU: Ku, J
EM: mku@dec.state.ny.us
AF: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Bureau of Air Research, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-3259 United States
AU: Rosenzweig, C
EM: crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov
AF: NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025 United States
AU: Goldberg, R
EM: ccrag@giss.nasa.gov
AF: NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025 United States
AB: New tools are needed for assessing public health impacts of climate change. This paper describes the results of an integrated assessment of the health impacts of global climate change in the New York metropolitan region, projected for the decade of the 2050s. The model systems used for this study are the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Global Atmosphere-Ocean Model; the Penn State/NCAR MM5 mesoscale meteorological model; the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions Modeling System (SMOKE); and the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for simulating air quality. Simulations are performed for five summer seasons each during the 1990s and the 2050s, using greenhouse gas emissions projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 scenario. The GISS global climate model at 4 x 5 degree horizontal resolution is used as input to the MM5 model run at nested grids down to 36 km resolution. The MM5 at 36 km subsequently serves as input for the CMAQ ozone simulations. A risk assessment modeling framework is used to estimate summer heat- and ozone-related mortality in the region, with a focus on comparing respective estimates for the 1990s versus the 2050s. These endpoints represent two potentially appreciable public health impacts resulting from climate change-induced alterations in regional temperature and air quality profiles. Concentration-response functions from the epidemiological literature describing temperature-mortality and ozone-mortality relationships are applied in the risk assessment, to estimate numbers of regional deaths in a typical 1990s summer and a typical 2050s summer. An evaluation to define ozone-related mortality uses a minimum-value threshold applied across the 1-hour daily maximum ozone model outputs, to identify days that pose an elevated relative risk of ozone mortality. A parallel evaluation of heat-related mortality applies a 23.08$\deg$C (73.54$\deg$F) threshold value, above which the relative risk of heat-related mortality increases by 13.05% per 5.6$\deg$C (10$\deg$F). 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 far greater relative increase as compared to the 1990s, with a doubling to tripling of regional summer heat deaths possible by the 2050s.
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 1630 Impact phenomena
SC: U
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting