Health and equity implications of individual adaptation to air pollution in a changing climate.

Future climate change can cause more days with poor air quality. This could trigger more alerts telling people to stay inside to protect themselves, with potential consequences for health and health equity. Here, we study the change in US air quality alerts over this century due to fine particulate matter (PM), who they may affect, and how they may respond.

Prescribed fires, smoke exposure, and hospital utilization among heart failure patients.

Background: Prescribed fires often have ecological benefits, but their environmental health risks have been infrequently studied. We investigated associations between residing near a prescribed fire, wildfire smoke exposure, and heart failure (HF) patients' hospital utilization.

Methods: We used electronic health records from January 2014 to December 2016 in a North Carolina hospital-based cohort to determine HF diagnoses, primary residence, and hospital utilization.

The Health and Climate Benefits of Economic Dispatch in China's Power System.

China's power system is highly regulated and uses an "equal-share" dispatch approach. However, market mechanisms are being introduced to reduce generation costs and improve system reliability. Here, we quantify the climate and human health impacts brought about by this transition, modeling China's power system operations under economic dispatch.

Diverse Pathways for Power Sector Decarbonization in Texas Yield Health Cobenefits but Fail to Alleviate Air Pollution Exposure Inequities.

Decarbonizing power systems is a critical component of climate change mitigation, which can have public health cobenefits by reducing air pollution. Many studies have examined strategies to decarbonize power grids and quantified their health cobenefits. However, few of them focus on near-term cobenefits at community levels, while comparing various decarbonization pathways.

Uncertainty in Health Impact Assessments of Smoke From a Wildfire Event.

Wildfires cause elevated air pollution that can be detrimental to human health. However, health impact assessments associated with emissions from wildfire events are subject to uncertainty arising from different sources. Here, we quantify and compare major uncertainties in mortality and morbidity outcomes of exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) pollution estimated for a series of wildfires in the Southeastern U.

Potential impacts of prescribed fire smoke on public health and socially vulnerable populations in a Southeastern U.S. state.

Prescribed fire is an essential tool for wildfire risk mitigation and ecosystem restoration in the Southeastern United States. It is also one of the region's largest sources of atmospheric emissions. The public health impacts of prescribed fire smoke, however, remain uncertain.

Air quality modeling to inform pollution mitigation strategies in a Latin American megacity.

Poor air quality disproportionally impacts cities in low- and middle-income countries. In Bogotá, Colombia, a metropolitan area with over 10 million inhabitants, fine particulate matter (PM) levels regularly exceed air quality guidelines, leading to detrimental effects on health. Although there is public interest to improve the city's air quality, the main sources of PM pollution have not been clearly identified and the use of modeling for policy development in Bogotá has been limited.

African American Exposure to Prescribed Fire Smoke in Georgia, USA.

Our project examines the association between percent African American and smoke pollution in the form of prescribed burn-sourced, fine particulate matter (PM) in the U.S. state of Georgia for 2018.

Effect of Health-Related Uncertainty and Natural Variability on Health Impacts and Cobenefits of Climate Policy.

Climate policy can mitigate health risks attributed to intensifying air pollution under climate change. However, few studies quantify risks of illness and death, examine their contribution to climate policy benefits, or assess their robustness in light of natural climate variability. We employ an integrated modeling framework of the economy, climate, air quality, and human health to quantify the effect of natural variability on U.

U.S. Air Quality and Health Benefits from Avoided Climate Change under Greenhouse Gas Mitigation.

We evaluate the impact of climate change on U.S. air quality and health in 2050 and 2100 using a global modeling framework and integrated economic, climate, and air pollution projections.

Simulating smoke transport from wildland fires with a regional-scale air quality model: sensitivity to spatiotemporal allocation of fire emissions.

Air quality forecasts generated with chemical transport models can provide valuable information about the potential impacts of fires on pollutant levels. However, significant uncertainties are associated with fire-related emission estimates as well as their distribution on gridded modeling domains. In this study, we explore the sensitivity of fine particulate matter concentrations predicted by a regional-scale air quality model to the spatial and temporal allocation of fire emissions.