The Air Pollution Human Health Burden in Different Future Scenarios That Involve the Mitigation of Near-Term Climate Forcers, Climate and Land-Use

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  • Turnock S.T.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Leeds
  • Reddington C.L.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Leeds
  • West J.J.
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
  • O’Connor F.M.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Exeter
Abstract
  • Elevated surface concentrations of ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can lead to poor air quality and detrimental impacts on human health. These pollutants are also termed Near-Term Climate Forcers (NTCFs) as they can also influence the Earth's radiative balance on timescales shorter than long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we use the Earth system model, UKESM1, to simulate the change in surface ozone and PM2.5 concentrations from different NTCF mitigation scenarios, conducted as part of the Aerosol and Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP). These are then combined with relative risk estimates and projected changes in population demographics, to estimate the mortality burden attributable to long-term exposure to ambient air pollution. Scenarios that involve the strong mitigation of air pollutant emissions yield large future benefits to human health (25%), particularly across Asia for black carbon (7%), when compared to the future reference pathway. However, if anthropogenic emissions follow the reference pathway, then impacts to human health worsen over South Asia in the short term (11%) and across Africa (20%) in the longer term. Future climate change impacts on air pollutants can offset some of the health benefits achieved by emission mitigation measures over Europe for PM2.5 and East Asia for ozone. In addition, differences in the future chemical environment over regions are important considerations for mitigation measures to achieve the largest benefit to human health. Future policy measures to mitigate climate warming need to also consider the impact on air quality and human health across different regions to achieve the maximum co-benefits.
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Resource type
  • Article
License
  • Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Journal title
  • GeoHealth
Journal volume
  • 7
Journal issue
  • 8
Language
  • English
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Funder
  • Steven Turnock would like to acknowledge that support for this work came from the UK‐China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund. Fiona M. O’Connor was supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS. Carly Reddington was supported by the AIA Group Limited. J. Jason West was supported by the NASA Grant NNX16AQ30G. We gratefully acknowledge python code and previously published work from L. Conibear (formerly at the University of Leeds, now at Tomorrow.io), which assisted us in performing the health impact assessment. We gratefully acknowledge B. B. Hughes, J. S. Arevalo, C. Vandenberg, and colleagues at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures for providing global future baseline mortality and population age data.
  • Steven Turnock would like to acknowledge that support for this work came from the UK-China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund. Fiona M. O’Connor was supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS. Carly Reddington was supported by the AIA Group Limited. J. Jason West was supported by the NASA Grant NNX16AQ30G. We gratefully acknowledge python code and previously published work from L. Conibear (formerly at the University of Leeds, now at Tomorrow.io), which assisted us in performing the health impact assessment. We gratefully acknowledge B. B. Hughes, J. S. Arevalo, C. Vandenberg, and colleagues at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures for providing global future baseline mortality and population age data.
ISSN
  • 2471-1403
Publisher
  • John Wiley and Sons Inc

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