Turnock, S.T. orcid.org/0000-0002-0036-4627, Reddington, C.L. orcid.org/0000-0002-5990-4966, West, J.J. orcid.org/0000-0001-5652-4987 et al. (1 more author) (2023) The Air Pollution Human Health Burden in Different Future Scenarios That Involve the Mitigation of Near‐Term Climate Forcers, Climate and Land‐Use. GeoHealth, 7 (8). e2023GH000812. ISSN 2471-1403
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 Crown copyright and The Authors. GeoHealth published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union. This article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the King's Printer for Scotland. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
Keywords: | air quality; climate change; human health; air pollutants |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Oct 2023 10:06 |
Last Modified: | 20 Oct 2023 10:06 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Geophysical Union |
Identification Number: | 10.1029/2023gh000812 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:204424 |