Constraining Climate and Health Impacts of Atmospheric Aerosols Using Adjoint Modeling

Lacey, Forrest Gerhart

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Constraining Climate and Health Impacts of Atmospheric Aerosols Using Adjoint Modeling Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/kh04dp86z

Abstract

Emissions from anthropogenic activity impact both health and climate. Through the use of adjoint modeling we have developed sensitivities to estimate either the surface temperature change or premature deaths due to an emissions perturbation at the scale of the model resolution. For estimation of ambient climate impacts, this work includes parameterizations of indirect and semi-direct radiative forcing in conjunction with regional radiative forcing scaling factors to estimate a range of temperature impacts, along with a central estimate, for any emissions perturbation. We have combined this with health impact sensitivities that use satellite downscaling in order to calculate human exposure at the 0.1 degree by 0.1 degree resolution. As an application of these techniques we have created an emissions inventory of aerosol and greenhouse gas emissions from global solid fuel use for cooking. We have estimated that a linear phased removal of these cookstove emissions leads to cooling of 79 mK (12 mK warming to 169 mK cooling) in 2050 and prevention of 260,000 (137,000 to 268,000) premature deaths per year. This work has also been able to highlight countries that are optimal targets for cookstove interventions based on both overall magnitude of impact and the marginal per-cookstove impacts. The largest impacts for climate and health are realized in China and India, while Ukraine and Azerbaijan have the largest per cookstove impacts. In addition to global impacts, the tools developed here also have been applied on a regional scale to estimate the impacts of clean cookstove implementation scenarios within Mozambique where emissions from solid fuel use is responsible for 278 annual premature deaths and warming of 0.7 mK by 2050. The models and estimates of impacts presented in this work will provide policy makers with improved information that can be used when designing not only cookstove interventions, but any emissions mitigation scenario.

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