Premature Deaths in Africa Due To Particulate Matter Under High and Low Warming Scenarios.
Abstract
Sustainable development and climate change mitigation can provide enormous public
health benefits via improved air quality, especially in polluted areas. We use the
latest state-of-the-art composition-climate model simulations to contrast human exposure
to fine particulate matter in Africa under a "baseline" scenario with high material
consumption, population growth, and warming to that projected under a sustainability
scenario with lower consumption, population growth, and warming. Evaluating the mortality
impacts of these exposures, we find that under the low warming scenario annual premature
deaths due to PM2.5 are reduced by roughly 515,000 by 2050 relative to the high warming scenario (100,000,
175,000, 55,000, 140,000, and 45,000 in Northern, West, Central, East, and Southern
Africa, respectively). This reduction rises to ∼800,000 by the 2090s, though by that
time much of the difference is attributable to the projected differences in population.
By contrast, during the first half of the century benefits are driven predominantly
by emissions changes. Depending on the region, we find large intermodel spreads of
∼25%-50% in projected future exposures owing to different physics across the ensemble
of 6 global models. The spread of projected deaths attributable to exposure to fine
particulate matter, including uncertainty in the exposure-response function, are reduced
in every region to ∼20%-35% by the non-linear exposure-response function. Differences
between the scenarios have an even narrower spread of ∼5%-25% and are highly statistically
significant in all regions for all models. These results provide valuable information
for policy-makers to consider when working toward climate change mitigation and sustainable
development goals.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26183Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1029/2022gh000601Publication Info
Shindell, D; Faluvegi, G; Parsons, L; Nagamoto, E; & Chang, J (2022). Premature Deaths in Africa Due To Particulate Matter Under High and Low Warming Scenarios.
GeoHealth, 6(5). pp. e2022GH000601. 10.1029/2022gh000601. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26183.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Luke Parsons
Affiliate
Luke Parsons is a climate researcher and lecturer. He teaches about climate change
and climate impacts and studies climate dynamics, drought, and climate change + deforestation
+ emissions impacts on the environment, human health, well-being, and the economy.
In addition to his work as a researcher, Luke is also a Wilderness First Responder
and former NOLS instructor who enjoys backpacking, climbing, and taking panoramic
landscape photographs.<a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2F
Drew Todd Shindell
Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Earth Science
Drew Shindell is Nicholas Professor of Earth Science at Duke University. From 1995
to 2014 he was at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and
taught at Columbia University. He earned his Bachelor's at UC Berkeley and PhD at
Stony Brook University, both in Physics. He studies climate change, air quality, and
links between science and policy. He has been an author on >250 peer-reviewed publications,
received awards from Scientific American, NASA, the NSF and the EPA,
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