Abstract
Adjoint sensitivity analysis of numerical models provides a platform for directly linking public health effects with air quality for evaluating emission control policies in a more straightforward manner. We link epidemiological and valuation statistics to the adjoint of CMAQ and calculate sensitivities of short-term mortality-related benefits in Canada, the U.S. and Europe to anthropogenic NOx and VOC emissions across two continental domains. Our results show significant spatial variability in impacts of NOx and VOC emissions reduction on short-term mortality. We estimate that sensitivities of mortality-related benefits to 10 % NOx emissions reductions in major cities reach monetary values in excess of $635K/day in Europe and $355K/day in North America. We find that when the cumulative effects of anthropogenic emissions on O3 and NO2 population exposure are considered, NOx emissions reductions generally yield higher mortality-related benefits than the same relative reductions in VOC emissions.
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References
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Questioner Name: Wouter Lefebvre
Q: Would including PM (or its components) in your results change your costs? Would it, in your opinion, eliminate the negative costs per vehicle? If no, would it then be advised to encourage people to drive more?
A: Firstly, our analysis only considers gas-phase pollutant exposure as the adjoint to CMAQ for PM is still under development. Including PM would indeed affect the health benefit sensitivities and hence the transportation cost estimates we calculate. In some cities, dis-benefits (or negative sensitivities) associated with NOx emissions reduction would be outweighed by the beneficial impacts of reduced national exposure to secondary PM. However, in strongly NOx-inhibited urban environments where substantial negative sensitivities exist, we expect that the negative costs per vehicle removed might still exist. Reduced mobile emissions of NOx usually accompany reduction in co-pollutants such as primary PM, so the overall benefit in a multi-pollutant analysis is likely to be positive.
The results of this work do not necessarily suggest that people should be encouraged to drive in locations that show negative sensitivities. Long-term air quality planning would incorporate a combination of local and particularly regional emission controls (e.g. power plants) that would cause urban environments to become less and less NOx-inhibited. Therefore, these dis-benefits are likely to become smaller as more progressive controls take effect.
Questioner Name: Sergey Napelenok
Q: Do you think your results will change by picking different episode lengths?
A: We have noticed that the temporally-averaged benefit sensitivities do change over various simulation periods due to a strong dependency on meteorology. For long-term air quality planning, it is advised to perform adjoint sensitivity analysis over more than just a single season of 1Â year to capture intra-season and intra-annual variability.
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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Pappin, A., Hakami, A., Resler, J., Liczki, J., Vlcek, O. (2014). Attribution of Ozone Pollution Control Benefits to Individual Sources. In: Steyn, D., Builtjes, P., Timmermans, R. (eds) Air Pollution Modeling and its Application XXII. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5577-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5577-2_7
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