Abstract
The spatial pattern of the uncertainty in air pollution-related health impacts due to climate change has rarely been studied due to the lack of high-resolution model simulations, especially under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), the latest greenhouse gas emission pathways. We estimated future tropospheric ozone (O3) and related excess mortality and evaluated the associated uncertainties in the continental United States under RCPs. Based on dynamically downscaled climate model simulations, we calculated changes in O3 level at 12 km resolution between the future (2057 and 2059) and base years (2001–2004) under a low-to-medium emission scenario (RCP4.5) and a fossil fuel intensive emission scenario (RCP8.5). We then estimated the excess mortality attributable to changes in O3. Finally, we analyzed the sensitivity of the excess mortality estimates to the input variables and the uncertainty in the excess mortality estimation using Monte Carlo simulations. O3-related premature deaths in the continental U.S. were estimated to be 1312 deaths/year under RCP8.5 (95 % confidence interval (CI): 427 to 2198) and −2118 deaths/year under RCP4.5 (95 % CI: −3021 to −1216), when allowing for climate change and emissions reduction. The uncertainty of O3-related excess mortality estimates was mainly caused by RCP emissions pathways. Excess mortality estimates attributable to the combined effect of climate and emission changes on O3 as well as the associated uncertainties vary substantially in space and so do the most influential input variables. Spatially resolved data is crucial to develop effective community level mitigation and adaptation policy.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bell ML, McDermott A, Zeger SL, Samet J, Dominici F (2004) Ozone and short-term mortality in 95 US urban communities, 1987–2000. JAMA 292(19):2372–2378
Bell ML, Goldberg R, Hogrefe C et al (2007) Climate change, ambient ozone, and health in 50 US cities. Clim Chang 82(1):61–76
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (2012) Wide-Ranging On Line Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER). http://wonder.cdc.gov. Accessed 27 November 2012.
Chang HH, Zhou J, Fuentes M (2010) Impact of climate change on ambient ozone level and mortality in Southeastern United States. Int J Environ Res Public Health 7:2866–2880
Fann N, Lamson AD, Anenberg SC, Wesson K, Risley D, Hubbell BJ (2012) Estimating the national public health burden associated with exposure to ambient PM2.5 and ozone. Risk Anal 32(1):81–95
Gao Y, Fu JS, Drake JB, Lamarque JF, Liu Y (2013) The impact of emission and climate change on ozone in the United States under representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Atmos Chem Phys 13:9607–9621. doi:10.5194/acp-13-9607-2013
Gent PR, Danabasoglu G, Donner LJ et al (2011) The community climate system model version 4. J Clim 24:4973–4991
Jackson JE, Yost MG, Karr C et al (2010) Public health impacts of climate change in Washington State: projected mortality risks due to heat events and air pollution. Clim Chang 102:159–186. doi:10.1007/s10584-010-9852-3
Jerrett M, Burnett RT, Pope CA et al (2009) Long-term ozone exposure and mortality. N Engl J Med 360:1085–1095
Knowlton K, Rosenthal JE, Hogrefe C et al (2004) Assessing ozone-related health impacts under a changing climate. Environ Health Perspect 112:1557–1563
Lamarque JF, Page Kyle G, Meinshausen M et al (2011) Global and regional evolution of short-lived radiatively-active gases and aerosols in the representative concentration pathways. Clim Chang 109:191–212
Levy JI, Chemerynski SM, Sarnat JA (2005) Ozone exposure and mortality: an empiric bayes metaregression analysis. Epidemiology 16(4):458–468
Meehl GA, Washington WM, Arblaster JM et al (2011) Climate system response to external forcings and climate change projections in CCSM4. J Clim 25:3661–3683. doi:10.1175/jcli-d-11-00240.1
Moss RH, Edmonds JA, Hibbard KA et al (2010) The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment. Nature 463:747–756
Post ES, Grambsch A, Weaver C et al (2012) Variation in estimated ozone-related health impacts of climate change due to modeling choices and assumptions. Environ Health Perspect 120:1559–1564
Preston SH, Heuveline P, Michel Guillot M (2001) Demography: measuring and modeling population processes. Blackwell, New York
Riahi K, Krey V, Rao S et al (2011) RCP-8.5: exploring the consequence of high emission trajectories. Clim Chang 109:33–57
Seinfeld JH, Pandis SN (2006) Atmospheric chemistry and physics: from air pollution to climate change. Wiley, New York
Skamarock WC, Klemp JB (2008) A time-split nonhydrostatic atmospheric model for weather research and forecasting applications. J Comput Phys 227(7):3465–3485
Tagaris E, Manomaiphiboon K, Liao KJ et al (2007) Impacts of global climate change and emissions on regional ozone and fine particulate matter concentrations over the United States. J Geophys Res 112:D14312. doi:10.1029/2006JD008262
Tagaris E, Liao K, DeLucia AJ, Deck L, Amar P, Russell AG (2009) Potential impact of climate change on air pollution-related human health effects. Environ Sci Technol 43(13):4979–4988
Thomson AM, Calvin KV, Smith SJ et al (2011) RCP4.5: a pathway for stabilization of radiative forcing by 2100. Clim Chang 109:77–94. doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0151-4
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) (2009) Land-Use scenarios: national-scale housing-density scenarios consistent with climate change storylines (final report), EPA/600/R-08/076F. USEPA, Washington
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) (2012) BenMap: environmental benefits mapping and analysis program: User’s manual appendices. USEPA, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, Research Triangle Park, NC
Van Vuuren DP, Edmonds J, Kainuma M et al (2011) The representative concentration pathways: an overview. Clim Chang 109:5–31. doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0148-z
West JJ, Smith SJ, Silva RA et al (2013) Co-benefit of mitigating global greenhouse gas emissions for future air quality and human health. Nature Clim Change 3:885–889
Wong DC, Pleim J, Mathur R et al (2012) WRF-CMAQ two-way coupled system with aerosol feedback: software development and preliminary results. Geosci Model Dev 5(2):299–312
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Grant No. 5 U01 EH000405) and by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Grant No. 1R21ES020225). National Science Foundation through TeraGrid resources provided by National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) (TG-ATM110009 and UT-TENN0006) and resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DEAC05-00OR22725) were used for the climate and air pollution model simulations. Yang Gao was partly supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute (DE-AC05-76RL01830).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1
(DOCX 2846 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kim, YM., Zhou, Y., Gao, Y. et al. Spatially resolved estimation of ozone-related mortality in the United States under two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and their uncertainty. Climatic Change 128, 71–84 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1290-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1290-1