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Future Fire Impacts on Smoke Concentrations, Visibility, and Health in the Contiguous United States

Journal Article · · GeoHealth
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gh000144· OSTI ID:1623731
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [4]
  1. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States). Dept. of Atmospheric Science; DOE/OSTI
  2. Univ. of Sheffield (United Kingdom). Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation. Dept. of Animal and Plant Sciences
  3. Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (United States). Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
  4. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States). Dept. of Atmospheric Science
  5. George Washington Univ., Washington, DC (United States). Dept. of Environmental and Occupational Health
  6. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
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Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from U.S. anthropogenic sources is decreasing. However, previous studies have predicted that PM2.5 emissions from wildfires will increase in the midcentury to next century, potentially offsetting improvements gained by continued reductions in anthropogenic emissions. Therefore, some regions could experience worse air quality, degraded visibility, and increases in population-level exposure. We use global climate model simulations to estimate the impacts of changing fire emissions on air quality, visibility, and premature deaths in the middle and late 21st century. We find that PM2.5 concentrations will decrease overall in the contiguous United States (CONUS) due to decreasing anthropogenic emissions (total PM2.5 decreases by 3% in Representative Concentration Pathway [RCP] 8.5 and 34% in RCP4.5 by 2100), but increasing fire-related PM2.5 (fire-related PM2.5 increases by 55% in RCP4.5 and 190% in RCP8.5 by 2100) offsets these benefits and causes increases in total PM2.5 in some regions. We predict that the average visibility will improve across the CONUS, but fire-related PM2.5 will reduce visibility on the worst days in western and southeastern U.S. regions. We estimate that the number of deaths attributable to total PM2.5 will decrease in both the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios (from 6% to 4–5%), but the absolute number of premature deaths attributable to fire-related PM2.5 will double compared to early 21st century. We provide the first estimates of future smoke health and visibility impacts using a prognostic land-fire model. Our results suggest the importance of using realistic fire emissions in future air quality projections.
Research Organization:
Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-00ER41132
OSTI ID:
1623731
Journal Information:
GeoHealth, Journal Name: GeoHealth Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 2; ISSN 2471-1403
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union - WileyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (13)

New Approaches to Identifying and Reducing the Global Burden of Disease From Pollution journal March 2020
Rapid dark aging of biomass burning as an overlooked source of oxidized organic aerosol journal December 2020
Associations between Ozone and Fine Particulate Matter and Respiratory Illness Found to Vary between Children and Adults. Implications for U.S. Air Quality Policy journal April 2019
Bioelectrical Impedance Techniques in Medicine Part III: Impedance Imaging Third Section: Medical Applications journal January 1996
Impact of Wildfire Smoke on Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes in Colorado, 2007–2015 journal October 2019
OH chemistry of non-methane organic gases (NMOGs) emitted from laboratory and ambient biomass burning smoke: evaluating the influence of furans and oxygenated aromatics on ozone and secondary NMOG formation journal January 2019
Trends and spatial shifts in lightning fires and smoke concentrations in response to 21st century climate over the national forests and parks of the western United States journal July 2020
The Community Land Model Version 5: Description of New Features, Benchmarking, and Impact of Forcing Uncertainty journal December 2019
Toward a Resilient Global Society: Air, Sea Level, Earthquakes, and Weather journal August 2019
A Decadal Climatology of Chemical, Physical, and Optical Properties of Ambient Smoke in the Western and Southeastern United States journal January 2020
The association between wildfire smoke exposure and asthma-specific medical care utilization in Oregon during the 2013 wildfire season journal February 2020
The relationship between monthly air pollution and violent crime across the United States journal June 2019
Use of IoT sensing and occupant surveys for determining the resilience of buildings to forest fire generated PM2.5 journal October 2019

Figures / Tables (15)

Figure 1(p. 4)figure Figure 1
Table 1(p. 6)table Table 1
Table 2(p. 6)table Table 2
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Table 3(p. 14)table Table 3
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Figure 11(p. 15)figure Figure 11

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