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Future global mortality from changes in air pollution attributable to climate change

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 647–651 (2017)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 16 October 2017

This article has been updated

Abstract

Ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) are associated with premature human mortality1,2,3,4; their future concentrations depend on changes in emissions, which dominate the near-term5, and on climate change6,7. Previous global studies of the air-quality-related health effects of future climate change8,9 used single atmospheric models. However, in related studies, mortality results differ among models10,11,12. Here we use an ensemble of global chemistry–climate models13 to show that premature mortality from changes in air pollution attributable to climate change, under the high greenhouse gas scenario RCP8.5 (ref. 14), is probably positive. We estimate 3,340 (−30,300 to 47,100) ozone-related deaths in 2030, relative to 2000 climate, and 43,600 (−195,000 to 237,000) in 2100 (14% of the increase in global ozone-related mortality). For PM 2.5, we estimate 55,600 (−34,300 to 164,000) deaths in 2030 and 215,000 (−76,100 to 595,000) in 2100 (countering by 16% the global decrease in PM 2.5-related mortality). Premature mortality attributable to climate change is estimated to be positive in all regions except Africa, and is greatest in India and East Asia. Most individual models yield increased mortality from climate change, but some yield decreases, suggesting caution in interpreting results from a single model. Climate change mitigation is likely to reduce air-pollution-related mortality.

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Figure 1: Impact of RCP8.5 climate change on global mortality for individual models and the multi-model average.
Figure 2: Spatial distribution of the impact of climate change on mortality.
Figure 3: Projected impact of climate change on mortality for ten world regions.

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Change history

  • 16 October 2017

    In the version of this Letter originally published, the first row of Table 1, 'Base results', contained errors. These errors have been corrected in the online versions of this Letter.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by NIEHS grant no. 1 R21 ES022600-01, a fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and by a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from The Graduate School (UNC—Chapel Hill). We thank K. Yeatts (Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC—Chapel Hill), C. Mathers (WHO), P. Speyer (IHME), and A. Henley (Davis Library Research & Instructional Services, UNC—Chapel Hill). The work of D.B. and P.C.-S. was funded by the US Dept. of Energy (BER), performed under the auspices of LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344, and used the supercomputing resources of NERSC under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. R.M.D., I.A.M. and D.S.S. acknowledge ARCHER supercomputing resources and funding under the UK Natural Environment Research Council grant: NE/I008063/1. G.Z. acknowledges the NZ eScience Infrastructure, which is funded jointly by NeSI’s collaborator institutions and through the MBIE’s Research Infrastructure programme. G.A.F. has received funding from BEIS under the Hadley Centre Climate Programme contract (GA01101) and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 641816 (CRESCENDO). D.T.S. and G.F. acknowledge the NASA High-End Computing Program through the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard Space Flight Center for computational resources.

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Author notes

  1. Raquel A. Silva

    Present address: Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education at US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 27711, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27599, USA

    Raquel A. Silva & J. Jason West

  2. NCAR Earth System Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, 80307, USA

    Jean-François Lamarque

  3. Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 27710, USA

    Drew T. Shindell

  4. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK

    William J. Collins

  5. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Earth Institute, New York, New York, 10025, USA

    Greg Faluvegi

  6. Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, Exeter, EX1 3P, UK

    Gerd A. Folberth

  7. NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540, USA

    Larry W. Horowitz & Vaishali Naik

  8. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan

    Tatsuya Nagashima

  9. National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK

    Steven T. Rumbold

  10. Earth and Environmental Science, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8601, Japan

    Kengo Sudo

  11. Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, 816-8580, Japan

    Toshihiko Takemura

  12. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, 94551, USA

    Daniel Bergmann & Philip Cameron-Smith

  13. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FF, UK

    Ruth M. Doherty, Ian A. MacKenzie & David S. Stevenson

  14. GAME/CNRM, Meteo-France, CNRS—Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques, Toulouse, 31057, France

    Beatrice Josse

  15. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington, 6021, New Zealand

    Guang Zeng

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Contributions

J.J.W., J.-F.L., D.T.S. and R.A.S. conceived the study. All other co-authors conducted the model simulations. R.A.S. processed model output and estimated human mortality. R.A.S. and J.J.W. analysed results. R.A.S. and J.J.W. prepared the manuscript and all co-authors commented on it.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. Jason West.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Silva, R., West, J., Lamarque, JF. et al. Future global mortality from changes in air pollution attributable to climate change. Nature Clim Change 7, 647–651 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3354

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