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Journal article
Elucidating emissions control strategies for ozone to protect human health and public welfare within the continental United States
Environmental research letters, v 14(12), pp 124093/1-124093/10
23 Dec 2019
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Ground-level ozone, which forms photochemically in the atmosphere from precursor emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds, is a criteria pollutant that harms human health and public welfare. For a representative summer episode, premature mortality and potential productivity losses (PPLs) of selected crops and trees attributable to ozone exposure have been quantified using ozone fields from the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. We applied exposure-response models for the increased risk of premature mortality due to long-term exposure to ozone over a theoretical minimum risk exposure level (TMREL) and for the reduced accumulation of vegetative biomass for four crop species and eleven tree species using the W126 metric designed to capture impacts on plants. To elucidate which emissions contributed to these disbenefits, we applied adjoint-based sensitivity analysis, which efficiently estimates sensitivities of concentration-based metrics with respect to numerous emissions parameters simultaneously. The adjoint of CMAQ was applied to the continental US to calculate the influence of spatially-resolved ozone precursor emissions on the annual average, domain-wide daily maximum 8 h average over the TMREL (elevated MDA8), premature mortality attributable to exposure to ozone above the TMREL, and PPLs. These quantities provide the impact in terms of the percent reduction in precursor emissions. Additionally, locations where similar percent reductions in ozone precursor emissions would impact one or more endpoints greater than average have been identified. NOx emissions were found to contribute most to the three metrics. The distinct spatial patterns of emissions influences on public welfare disbenefits as compared to the elevated MDA8 and premature mortality suggest that the current regulatory averaging time motivates different emissions control strategies than those that could most directly protect public welfare.
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Details
- Title
- Elucidating emissions control strategies for ozone to protect human health and public welfare within the continental United States
- Creators
- Congmeng Lyu - Drexel UniversityShannon L Capps - Drexel UniversityAmir Hakami - Carleton UniversityShunliu Zhao - Carleton UniversityJaroslav Resler - Czech Academy of SciencesGregory R Carmichael - University of IowaAdrian Sandu - Virginia TechArmistead G Russell - Georgia Institute of TechnologyTianfeng Chai - NOAA Air Resources Laboratory; Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS), University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States of AmericaDaven K Henze - University of Colorado Boulder
- Publication Details
- Environmental research letters, v 14(12), pp 124093/1-124093/10
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Number of pages
- 10
- Grant note
- Health Effects Institute (https://doi.org/10.13039/100001160) Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada HAQAST NNX16AQ26G; HAQAST NNX16AQ29G / National Aeronautics and Space Administration (https://doi.org/10.13039/100000104)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000514834100001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85088925482
- Other Identifier
- 991019167630704721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Environmental Sciences
- Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences