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Title: Co-occurrence of extremes in surface ozone, particulate matter, and temperature over eastern North America

Abstract

Heat waves and air pollution episodes pose a serious threat to human health and may worsen under future climate change. In this paper, we use 15 years (1999–2013) of commensurately gridded (1° x 1°) surface observations of extended summer (April–September) surface ozone (O3), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and maximum temperature (TX) over the eastern United States and Canada to construct a climatology of the coincidence, overlap, and lag in space and time of their extremes. Extremes of each quantity are defined climatologically at each grid cell as the 50 d with the highest values in three 5-y windows (~95th percentile). Any two extremes occur on the same day in the same grid cell more than 50% of the time in the northeastern United States, but on a domain average, co-occurrence is approximately 30%. Although not exactly co-occurring, many of these extremes show connectedness with consistent offsets in space and in time, which often defy traditional mechanistic explanations. All three extremes occur primarily in large-scale, multiday, spatially connected episodes with scales of >1,000 km and clearly coincide with large-scale meteorological features. The largest, longest-lived episodes have the highest incidence of co-occurrence and contain extreme values well above their local 95th percentilemore » threshold, by +7 ppb for O3, +6 µg m–3 for PM2.5, and +1.7 °C for TX. Lastly, our results demonstrate the need to evaluate these extremes as synergistic costressors to accurately quantify their impacts on human health.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [1]
  1. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
OSTI Identifier:
1345072
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1465179
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0012536
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal Volume: 114 Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; extremes; ozone; particulate matter; heat waves

Citation Formats

Schnell, Jordan L., and Prather, Michael J. Co-occurrence of extremes in surface ozone, particulate matter, and temperature over eastern North America. United States: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.1073/pnas.1614453114.
Schnell, Jordan L., & Prather, Michael J. Co-occurrence of extremes in surface ozone, particulate matter, and temperature over eastern North America. United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614453114
Schnell, Jordan L., and Prather, Michael J. Mon . "Co-occurrence of extremes in surface ozone, particulate matter, and temperature over eastern North America". United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614453114.
@article{osti_1345072,
title = {Co-occurrence of extremes in surface ozone, particulate matter, and temperature over eastern North America},
author = {Schnell, Jordan L. and Prather, Michael J.},
abstractNote = {Heat waves and air pollution episodes pose a serious threat to human health and may worsen under future climate change. In this paper, we use 15 years (1999–2013) of commensurately gridded (1° x 1°) surface observations of extended summer (April–September) surface ozone (O3), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and maximum temperature (TX) over the eastern United States and Canada to construct a climatology of the coincidence, overlap, and lag in space and time of their extremes. Extremes of each quantity are defined climatologically at each grid cell as the 50 d with the highest values in three 5-y windows (~95th percentile). Any two extremes occur on the same day in the same grid cell more than 50% of the time in the northeastern United States, but on a domain average, co-occurrence is approximately 30%. Although not exactly co-occurring, many of these extremes show connectedness with consistent offsets in space and in time, which often defy traditional mechanistic explanations. All three extremes occur primarily in large-scale, multiday, spatially connected episodes with scales of >1,000 km and clearly coincide with large-scale meteorological features. The largest, longest-lived episodes have the highest incidence of co-occurrence and contain extreme values well above their local 95th percentile threshold, by +7 ppb for O3, +6 µg m–3 for PM2.5, and +1.7 °C for TX. Lastly, our results demonstrate the need to evaluate these extremes as synergistic costressors to accurately quantify their impacts on human health.},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1614453114},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
number = 11,
volume = 114,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Feb 27 00:00:00 EST 2017},
month = {Mon Feb 27 00:00:00 EST 2017}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614453114

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