Impacts of Future Environmental Change on Climate- and Air Pollution-Mediated Human Health

Contents

Members
A government offical holding a box of polluted Los Angeles air sent via post in the 1950s
Temperature anomoly
Beach goers during 2003 heatwave
Air pollution in UK


We have established collaborative research between environmental and health disciplines in order to understand the interaction between climate, air pollution and human health. Our specific focus will be ozone and heat-related impacts.

PROOF OF CONCEPT

Future changes in climate and trace gas emissions will modify both ozone levels and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves. The associated joint impacts on population health may require reappraisal of policy responses and revised or more complex ozone air quality guidelines.

"Widespread changes in extreme temperatures have been observed over the last 50 years. Cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights and heat waves have become more frequent." - IPCC - AR4 2007

"Air pollution is the environmental factor with the greatest impact on health in Europe and is responsible for the largest burden of environment-related disease. Recent estimates indicate that 20 million Europeans suffer from respiratory problems every day." - EEA 2005

Climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events such as heat waves. Climate and land-use change will also modify long-range transport of ozone and its precursors as well as emissions from natural sources. Numerous studies have examined the effect of extreme temperatures or heat waves on mortality rates controlling for air pollutants and epidemics.

Because ozone is generated by photochemical processes, its levels can rise substantially on hot sunny days, potentially exacerbating the direct health impacts of high temperatures. Stedman (2004) suggests that 11/28% (with/without assumption of O3 health threshold of 50 ppb) of the 2,045 deaths in England and Wales attributable to the heat wave of August 2003 may have been related to ozone. The EEA report on Environment and Health stressed the importance of identifying direct effects of climate change on human health such as increased heat waves; there are no conclusive studies on this issue to date. In this project, we will address this knowledge gap by (i) quantifying the interaction between ozone-heat and mortality and (ii) producing high resolution projections of future climate and ozone concentrations over the UK. Only a few studies have used chemistry-climate models (CCMs) to assess future impacts of climate or emission scenarios on human health, and no study has yet been performed for the UK at fine-scale resolution. Accordingly, we will begin to assess the combined effect of ozone and heat on mortality under future scenarios of ozone precursor emissions and climate change.