Grantee Research Project Results
2009 Progress Report: Effects of Climate Change on Human Health: Current and Future Impacts
EPA Grant Number: R832751Title: Effects of Climate Change on Human Health: Current and Future Impacts
Investigators: Hanna, Adel , Yeatts, Karin B. , Xiu, Aijun , Henderson, Fred , Robinson, Peter , Smith, Richard , Arunachalam, Sarav , Zhu, Zhengyuan
Current Investigators: Hanna, Adel , Yeatts, Karin B. , Xiu, Aijun , Henderson, Fred , Robinson, Peter , Smith, Richard , Zhu, Zhengyuan
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2008 (Extended to December 31, 2010)
Project Period Covered by this Report: January 1, 2009 through December 31,2009
Project Amount: $599,103
RFA: The Impact of Climate Change & Variability on Human Health (2005) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Climate Change
Objective:
The overall goal of this project is to define more precisely the interrelationships among (a) changes in climate and meteorological conditions, (b) air pollution, and (c) heat- and cold-related morbidity severe enough to warrant clinical contact. A secondary goal is to evaluate heat-related morbidity in a vulnerable population: children and adults under economic disadvantage.Progress Summary:
We completed the analyses of the above interrelationships for five cities across North Carolina: Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, and Wilmington. Ten years of data (1996-2005) were used, including (a) weather observations (daily maximum temperature, daily average wind speed, daily minimum temperature, surface pressure, dew point); (b) air quality measurements (O3, PM10, and, if available, NO2 and CO); and (c) hospital admissions records of asthma and myocardial infarction (MI). Daily weather and climate conditions in the five cities were classified in terms of eight air mass types. We used a generalized linear model to study the relationship between current, 1-day-lagged, 2-day-lagged, 3-day-lagged, 4-day-lagged, and 5-day-lagged O3, NO2, PM10, and CO concentrations, air mass types, and asthma and MI hospital admissions in adults, after adjusting for meteorological variables, nonlinear seasonal effects, day of week effects, and long-term trend. After conducting the analysis for the five selected cities, we concluded from the results that three weather types (circulation patterns or synoptic air mass patterns), in conjunction with ambient air pollution levels, are associated with increased asthma and MI hospital admissions. These three are the Dry Moderate (DM), Dry Tropical (DT), and Moist Tropical (MT) air masses. Additional health data (doctor’s office, emergency room, and hospital visits for asthma in children enrolled in Medicaid) agreed with the above results from hospitalization data in terms of the validity of the air-mass/air-quality approach to characterizing the peaks in health data.The ranges of variability of meteorological and air quality parameters, such as ambient air temperature, dew point temperature, daily maximum one-hour O3, and daily average PM10 concentrations, associated with various air masses show close resemblance for the same air mass type for different cities. However, such parameters are distinctly different from one air mass type to another.
Our analyses did not lead to identification of a specific wind direction that characterizes moderately high ozone episodes in Charlotte. Cluster component analysis using the HYSPLIT 48-hour backward trajectories shows an almost equal probability of originating air from the four quadrants when O3 threshold values are equal or more than 80 ppb. Regarding extreme O3 conditions (>100 ppb), however, we found that they were characterized by southwesterly flow. Trajectories associated with PM10 show two primary origination directions: one from the northwest, the other from the southwest.
As indicated above, our results show that Dry Moderate, Dry Tropical, and Moist Tropical air masses are strong correlates to air quality degradation in terms of elevated O3 and PM ambient concentrations. The impacts on health in terms of hospital admissions of asthma and MI reveal levels of significance under these air masses in association with increase in O3 and PM concentrations. We conducted several tests to identify the sensitivity of such findings to various controls (controlling for city, temperature, dew point, etc.) and found that results can be sensitive to the type of control used. We will continue to further investigate such sensitivities.
We used the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) and the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) to simulate (1) current climate for the months of May through August for the years 2001, 2002, and 2003; and (2) future climate scenarios for the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2048, 2049, and 2050. While the CCSM provides the background of large-scale conditions, the WRF (at finer horizontal resolution) simulates the mesoscale and synoptic-scale meteorological conditions that are needed for processing emissions using the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) model, and air quality conditions using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, for those years. A preliminary analysis of the types and numbers of air masses revealed from the WRF predictions for July 2001 shows good agreement with air masses revealed from the observations.
We are in the process of publishing two journal articles on the findings of the project.
Future Activities:
During the final year of the project we will focus on the results of our modeling approach to examine future climate variability and its potential impacts on human health, in particular asthma and MI in North Carolina. This will include analyzing the modeling results that characterize the meteorological and air quality of current climate for the years 2001, 2002, and 2003, and for the future climate years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2048, 2049, 2050. We will examine the possible differences in the characteristics of air masses (frequency, strength) and air quality patterns (O3 and PM10) between current and future climate scenarios simulated for those years. The statistical health/air mass/air quality model that we have developed based on the 10- year data in the five cities in North Carolina will be used to identify impacts of future climate patterns on human health. We will also provide an estimate of the possible economic impacts of the future climate/air quality and health association.Journal Articles on this Report : 1 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
| Other project views: | All 11 publications | 1 publications in selected types | All 1 journal articles |
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Hanna AF, Yeatts KB, Xiu A, Zhu Z, Smith RL, Davis NN, Talgo KD, Arora G, Robinson PJ, Meng Q, Pinto JP. Associations between ozone and morbidity using the Spatial Synoptic Classification system. Environmental Health 2011;10(1):49. |
R832751 (2009) R832751 (Final) |
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Supplemental Keywords:
global climate, epidemiology, climate model, southeastern United States, Health, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Air, Ecological Risk Assessment, Health Risk Assessment, Risk Assessments, Atmosphere, Air Pollution Effects, Biochemistry, climate change, Environmental Monitoring, Global Climate Change, human exposure, air quality modeling, morbidity, statistical methods, climate models, human dimension, land use, air pollutionRelevant Websites:
http://www.ie.unc.edu/cempd/projects/EPA-Climate/index.cfm
(note that the site is password protected and, for now, can be accessed only by the team of investigators and the EPA Project Officer).
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.