Climate Change Set To Increase Air Pollution Deaths By Hundreds Of Thousands By 2100

The Conversation - Guang Zeng | Jason West

A boy plays cricket among smoke in Karachi. Deaths from air pollution across the globe will increase as climate change accelerates. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

Climate change is set to increase the amount of ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution we breathe, which leads to lung disease, heart conditions, and stroke. Less rain and more heat means this pollution will stay in the air for longer, creating more health problems.
Our research, published in Nature Climate Change, found that if climate change continues unabated, it will cause about 60,000 extra deaths globally each year by 2030, and 260,000 deaths annually by 2100, as a result of the impact of these changes on pollution.
This is the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of climate change on global air quality and health. Researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and New Zealand between them used nine different global chemistry-climate models.
Most models showed an increase in likely deaths – the clearest signal yet of the harm climate change will do to air quality and human health, adding to the millions of people who die from air pollution every year.

Stagnant air
Climate change fundamentally alters the air currents that move pollution across continents and between the lower and higher layers of the atmosphere. This means that where air becomes more stagnant in a future climate, pollution stays near the ground in higher concentrations.
Ground-level ozone is created when chemical pollution (such as emissions from cars or manufacturing plants) reacts in the presence of sunlight. As climate change makes an area warmer and drier, it will produce more ozone.
Fine particles are a mixture of small solids and liquid droplets suspended in air. Examples include black carbon, organic carbon, soot, smoke and dust. These fine particles, which are known to cause lung diseases, are emitted from industry, transport and residential sources. Less rain means that fine particles stay in the air for longer.
While fine particles and ozone both occur naturally, human activity has increased them substantially.

Lung cancer and other respiratory diseases will rise dramatically under the effects of climate change. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has used four different future climate scenarios, representing optimistic to pessimistic levels of emissions reduction.
In a previous study, we modelled air pollution-related deaths between 2000 and 2100 based on the most pessimistic of these scenarios. This assumes large population growth, modest improvements in emissions-reducing technology, and ineffectual climate change policy.
That earlier study found that while global deaths related to ozone increase in the future, those related to fine particles decrease markedly under this scenario.

Emissions will likely lead to deaths
In our new study, we isolated the effects of climate change on global air pollution, by using emissions from the year 2000 together with simulations of climate for 2030 and 2100.
The projected air pollutant changes due to climate change were then used in a health risk assessment model. That model takes into account population growth, how susceptible a population is to health issues and how that might change over time, and the mortality risk from respiratory and heart diseases and lung cancer.
In simulations with our nine chemistry-climate models, we found that climate change caused 14% of the projected increase in ozone-related mortality by 2100, and offset the projected decrease in deaths related to fine particles by 16%.
Our models show that premature deaths increase in all regions due to climate change, except in Africa, and are greatest in India and East Asia.
Using multiple models makes the results more robust than using a single model. There is some spread of results amongst the nine models used here, with a few models estimating that climate change may decrease air pollution-related deaths. This highlights that results from any study using a single model should be interpreted with caution.
Australia and New Zealand are both relatively unpolluted compared with countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, both ozone and fine particle pollution currently cause relatively few deaths in both countries. However, we found that under climate change the risk will likely increase.
This paper highlights that climate change will increase human mortality through changes in air pollution. These health impacts add to others that climate change will also cause, including from heat stress, severe storms and the spread of infectious diseases. By impacting air quality, climate change will likely offset the benefits of other measures to improve air quality.

Links

• Can we blame climate change for thunderstorm asthma?
• Future global mortality from changes in air pollution attributable to climate change
• Air quality to suffer with global warming
• Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• The effect of future ambient air pollution on human premature mortality to 2100 using output from the ACCMIP model ensemble 

Help Us, Strategic Climate Communicators, You’re Our Only Hope

Resilience - Mike Sandler

An article in New York Magazine titled “The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, Economic Collapse, a Sun that Cooks Us: What Climate Change Could Wreak—Sooner Than You Think” has gotten the climate communications experts all peeved.  No no they say, “Fear is the mindkiller.”
And don’t go scaring Americans with “paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness.”
Resilience.org’s own Richard Heinberg weighed in with his take.
Let’s face it, climate activists have been complicit in the biggest ongoing strategic communications failure of all time.  We cannot figure out how to get Americans to care about their own survival regarding climate change yet.  We have failed, are failing right now, and as far as I can tell will continue to fail far into the future, but in our defense:

• Climate science is surrounded by uncertainties and probabilities.
• Scientists are trusted messengers, but are too timid for the dog-eat-dog public sphere.  Always hedging definitive statements with statements like “highly likely” even when they are talking about the fate of THE ENTIRE PLANET!)
• Global, slow-moving disasters always take a back seat to nearby fast-moving news stories.  So, apparently, one person being killed is more of a headline grabber than THE ENTIRE PLANET!?!
• Our brains are not wired correctly to process the information.
• Facts are not enough, and as George Lakoff reminds us, if the facts don’t fit the frame, the facts bounce off.  Some of the frames in question are: I gotta feed my family, and if some invisible gas is emitted as a by-product, so be it.  And I don’t want to sit in a dark room huddled in the cold just so I can feel virtuous for some benefit to my grandkids that you can’t even guarantee.  Plus China is just going to keep emitting, so f- it.
• The fossil fuel industry has funded a wildly successful (for them) disinformation campaign (that, if it continues being successful, will doom THE ENTIRE PLANET!)
• We have never experienced anything like climate change before.  We have never lived in an era like the Anthropocene before.  This stuff all takes several Ph.D’s to understand and process, and no one has time for that.
• Apparently, being dumb is cool, and our country is turning into an Idiocracy of drooling, reality-TV watching, Internet trolls, who only care about themselves and their annoying Internet memes where they make fun of people who actually care about the FATE OF THE PLANET.
• And tons more, this is just a taste to get started.

Climate change communicators seem to prefer “happy talk” that includes enough “maybes” and “possiblys” so as to not exaggerate the science.  True, climate activists are known for their doom and gloom.  And true, there are some great business opportunities in decarbonizing our unsustainable economy (see Musk, Elon).  Most of us are not going to become multi-billionaire entrepreneurs, but we could get involved in community-level efforts to green our schools, cities, congregations, etc.  The real lesson is to include solutions in every article.
That said, the only thing to fear is NOT fear itself.  Ignorance and self-imposed blinders are pretty bad too.  Uncalled-for optimism could prevent us from making the really tough decisions that we probably will need to make.  We need to be educated and willing to face inconvenient truths about the current state of the planet.  So let’s name a few:

• No more wild elephants in 20-30 years
• 500 West African lions currently remaining
• At least 23,000 species are threatened with extinction, including 22% of mammal species, 14% of birds, 29% of evaluated reptiles, as many as 43% of amphibians, 29% of evaluated fish, 26% of evaluated invertebrate animals, and 23% of plants
• 7.5 billion people currently on Earth, which could go to 9.5 billion by 2050.  Solution: provide access to education, economic opportunities, and health care, including family planning services, with a special focus on women’s rights.
• Sea level rise projected 2-3 feet by 2100.
• Current emissions trends are on track for a 7.2 degrees F (4 degrees C) rise in global mean temperature by 2100.

And while we’re at it, let’s discuss a few elements from previous mass extinctions of the ancient past here on Earth, things we need to be on the lookout for during our current human-caused climate disruption:

1.  Shutdown of the thermohaline cycle:  If the movement of hot ocean water at the tropics toward the pole where it’s cooler shuts down, watch out!
2. Forests drying out:  Keep an eye on the Amazon.  If it starts turning into kindling, watch out!
3. A sudden release of methane clathrates:  If there is a sudden release of pressurized methane trapped in tiny ice crystals known as “clathrates” caused by a melting of the permafrosts in Siberia or a warming of the deep ocean, watch out!
4. Deep ocean anoxia: A lack of oxygen at the bottom of the ocean, which when combined with the thermohaline cycle shutting down, could lead to a takeover by hydrogen sulphide-spewing bacteria with the potential to kill everything in its path. As Peter Ward memorably describes it, in his book Under a Green Sky  (a book that overly-sensitive climate communicators may want to avoid), if the ocean turns purple and the sky turns green skies, watch out!

I’m not a “doomer” but I also know that things are getting worse not better.  We need to make a change before we get to the inevitable breakdown of the world’s agricultural and economic systems, refugees, extinctions, diseases, mass migration, and increased Malthusian resource wars.
So I am a proponent of climate apocalyptic literacy, and I even wrote a quiz (that sadly, has not yet gone viral the way other pop culture trivia quizzes sometimes do).
This includes some occasional harsh doses of truth, aka reality.  If you can’t talk about the problem, how can you come up with commensurate solutions?
So yes, it is solutions time! (Rejoice climate communicators, rejoice!)  Remember, climate bloggers, never write a column without a solutions section.  You don’t need to make it a 3:1 solutions to problems ratio, but if you’re going to list the heavy problems like I just listed, you better have some good solutions to balance it out.  Let’s see…how about:

• A cap on global carbon emissions, with revenues returned back to people as a climate dividend (link to CapGlobalCarbon).  Or, to get started, how about a Cap & Dividend pilot at the city or State level )?
• Ban fossil fuels by 2050.  Folks, do you think listening to REM’s song “Shiny Happy People” on repeat is going to get us to the point where we collectively decide to shut down the whole fossil fuel industry?  We never will if we don’t know how serious the consequences could be if we don’t.  So be brave, readers, even if it means some dystopian thoughts about purple oceans and green skies.  At the localized level, this means divestment, banning coal and banning internal combustion vehicles.
• A steady-state economy that provides for its citizens with levels of population and consumption within the ecological carrying capacity and avoiding the paradox of striving for infinite economic growth on a finite planet.  In the near term this means championing these ideas in economic departments, at city council meetings, lobbying government agencies that use the flawed Gross Domestic Product indicator, and becoming a steady-stater.

Strategic climate communicators still don’t know what will be successful.  The extent of our failure is of Biblical proportions and continuing.  In the meantime, everyone should do everything, all the time, even if it means finding motivation by thinking about an uninhabitable world.

Links

• The Uninhabitable Earth
• Does Doom And Gloom Convince Anyone About Climate Change?
• The Climate Change Scare Campaign Most Politicians Won't Go Near
• Climate Change Doomsday Warning Of 'Rolling Death Smog' And 'Perpetual War' Criticised By Scientists
• Earth Could Become 'Practically Ungovernable' If Sea Levels Keep Rising, Says Former NASA Climate Chief
• Backlash Against Doomsday Article That Predicts A Climate Change Induced Apocalypse
• 'The Models Are Too Conservative': Paleontologist Peter Ward on What Past Mass Extinctions Can Teach Us About Climate Change Today
• Climate Change Is Killing Us Right No
• The World May Have Less Time To Address Climate Change Than Scientists Thought

Australia Blows Away July Daytime Temperature Records As Rain Bands Stay South

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australia smashed its daytime temperature records for July as another poor month for rainfall left skies relatively clear across the continent.
The Bureau of Meteorology's monthly reports showed average maximum temperatures were 2.62 degrees above the long-run average, beating the previous record set in 1975 by a full two-thirds of a degree.

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Even with widespread overnight frosts, mean temperatures - averaging out day and night time temperatures - came in as the third highest for July in records dating back to 1910.
The bureau confirmed Sydney had its second-warmest July for maximums, with an average daytime top of 19.1 degrees, or 2.7 degrees above the norm.
In the city, 10 days exceeded 20 degrees during the month, or more than triple the long-term average of such days. The cool nights kept minimum temperatures generally below par.
Rainfall in the city was the least since 1995, with less than one-seventh the typical falls at 12.6 millimetres.
NSW as a whole posted its driest July since 2002, with rainfall totals 70 per cent below average. Daytime temperatures were also the second-warmest on record. All but four days in the month were warmer than normal for maximums, the bureau said.
Dominant high-pressure systems have limited the penetration of rain-bearing cold fronts beyond the southern coast for most of the past two months, with little sign of the pattern breaking up.

Cool nights but record warm days were a feature of July across much of the country. Photo: Justin McManus

A similar story was true south of the border, with Victoria marking its second-driest start to winter in more than a century of records. June-July rainfall totals are the lowest for any year except 1982, backing up its record dry June.
After a cool start to July with several stations in Melbourne registering their coldest nights since 1997, temperatures in the city were generally warmer than average, particularly towards the end of the month.

A record warm July day for Sydney last Sunday drew people to the beach. Photo: Katherine Griffiths

As the bureau chart below shows, most of Australia posted very much above or record warm daytime temperatures last month.

"Average maximum temperatures were the highest on record for July over large parts of Queensland, Northern Territory and the northern half of Western Australia, with all three regions recording their warmest July days on record as a whole," the bureau said.
Queensland's warmest July on record for maximums beat a record set in 1915, while the NT's tally beat the previous record notched in 1975 by 0.84 degrees.
While the first half of July was particularly frosty for parts of inland regions – with some southern NSW and Victorian sites recording their coldest nights – overall minimum temperatures came in 1 degree warmer than usual for the month.
The monthly anomaly for maximum temperatures while large for July is not unprecedented, Blair Trewin, senior climatologist with the bureau, said. Other big jumps in setting recent record maximums include the 1.13-degree leap for August 2009 and 0.91 degrees in September 2013.

Rain in short supply
Nationally, Australia averaged 13.5 millimetres of rain, 39 per cent below average.
The Murray-Darling Basin, a key foodbowl region, reported another poor month, with rainfall less than half the average.
As the bureau chart below shows, the largest rain anomalies were across southern Australia, while the NT recorded some out-of-season rain.

The bureau's outlook for August-October indicates the odds favour continuing warmer and drier than average conditions across southern Australia.

Climate influences
The unusual dry spell for southern Australia is not being driven by conditions in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean.
As the bureau noted on Tuesday, the El Nino Southern Oscillation used to track pressure differences across the Pacific remains in its neutral phase, and all of the eight models the agency uses predict it will remain so for the rest of 2017.
Similarly, most models forecast the Indian Ocean Dipole, which tracks relative temperatures across that ocean, will remain in neutral for the key winter-spring period.
Of greater importance has been the westerly wind belt, which has contracted towards Antarctica. During so-called positive phases of the Southern Annular Mode, cold fronts track further south as has been the case in recent months.
As a result, rain bands have tended to skirt key farming regions of south-west and southern Australia in a pattern that models forecast will become more common as the climate warms, the bureau has said.

Links

• Testing times expected as extended dry period approaches
• Why extreme El Nino events are shaping as double trouble
• Sydney's driest July in decades - and the second warmest
• Earth reaches global warming 'tipping point'
• Winter weather record tumbles as temperature tops 26 degrees