Health Outcomes

• Not available

Health Outcome List:

• Not available

Environmental Agents

List of Environmental Agents:

• Air pollutants (ozone, particulate matter (PM 2.5/fine))

Source of Environmental Agents:

• Greenhouse gas emissions

Economic Evaluation / Methods and Source

Type:

• Cost-benefit analysis (CBA)

Cost Measures:

• Not available

Potential Cost Measures:

• Not available

Benefits Measures:

• Co-benefits from global and domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation
• seasonal and spatial patterns of future air quality changes as a result of GHG mitigation
• emission benefits
• air quality benefits from global and domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation (e.g., reduced co-emitted air pollutants, slowing climate change and its influence on air quality)

Potential Benefits Measures:

• Not available

Location:

• United States (nine regions in the contiguous U.S.)

Models Used:

• Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model
• Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) program
• Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ)
• Model of Ozone And Related Chemical Tracers, version 4, (MOZART-4)
• chemical transport models (CTMs)

Models References:

• References cited in publication — Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (Skamarock and Klemp, 2008); Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) program (Houyoux et al., 2000); MOZART-4 (West et al. 2013); Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ) (https://www.cmascenter.org/cmaq/index.cfm)

Methods Used:

• The authors build on scenarios from a previous global co-benefits study (West et al., 2013, or WEST2013) to examine the co-benefits of both global and regional greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation for U.S. air quality in 2050 at fine resolution. They — 1) used a comprehensive modeling framework for their downscaling processes, including a regional climate model (Weather Research and Forecasting model), to dynamically downscale the global climate to the contiguous United States; 2) used an emissions processing program (Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions) to directly process the global anthropogenic emissions to the regional scale; 3) created dynamical boundary conditions from the global co-benefit outputs for the regional chemical transport model; 4) quantified the total co-benefits of global GHG mitigation for U.S. air quality for both PM2.5 and O3; 5) separated the co-benefits into the two mechanisms analyzed by WEST2013 (i.e., co-benefits from reductions in co-emitted air pollutants and co-benefits from slowing climate change and its influence on air quality; 6) quantified the co-benefits from domestic GHG mitigation versus the co-benefits from those of foreign countries' reductions; and 7) presented the co-benefits from global and domestic GHG mitigation for nine U.S. regions.

Sources Used:

• Co-benefits of global greenhouse gas mitigation for future air quality and human health (West et al., 2013); A time-split nonhydrostatic atmospheric model for weather research and forecasting applications (Skamarock and Klemp, 2008); Emission inventory development and processing for the Seasonal Model for Regional Air Quality (SM-RAQ) project (Houyoux et al., 2000); Review of the governing equations, computational algorithms, and other components of the Models-3 Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System (Byun and Schere, 2006); US National Emissions Inventory (NEI); Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) datasets (REF and RCP4.5 scenarios); additional sources cited in publication

Economic Citation / Fundings

Citation:

• Zhang YQ, Bowden JH, Adelman Z, Naik V, Horowitz LW, Smith SJ, and West JJ. Co-benefits of global and regional greenhouse gas mitigation for US air quality in 2050. Atmos Chem Phys. 2016. 16; —.
• Pubmed
• DOI

NIEHS Funding:

• 1R21ES022600

Other Funding:

• U.S. EPA STAR grant number 834285