AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Balancing Health and Climate Impacts of Aerosols in a Changing World using GEOS-Chem Adjoint Sensitivities
FORREST LACEY, Daven Henze, University of Colorado, Boulder
Abstract Number: 258 Working Group: Linking Aerosols with Public Health in a Changing World
Abstract Aerosol formation has significant effects on both health and climate. When looking at future emissions scenarios, such as the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) outlined in the IPCC AR5, it is important to identify control strategies for regions that will have an impact on both of these effects. The GEOS-Chem Adjoint model is used to calculate sensitivities of the formation of population weighted PM2.5 with respect to anthropogenic emissions of aerosols and aerosol precursors. This was done at a 2 by 2.5 degree latitude – longitude grid for both the 2000 world population and the projected 2050 world population. The adjoint model is also used to calculate the sensitivities of both global and regional surface temperature change with respect to anthropogenic emissions following the absolute regional temperature potential method at the same gridded resolution for both 2000 and 2050 following RCP 4.5 (Shindell et al. 2010).
Combining these sensitivities, we identify regions and countries that have the largest impact on both health and climate. This result is also used to explore the co-benefits of a large number of different emissions perturbations including the projected RCP scenarios and different UNEP control measures. The advantage of using these sensitivities is that the impacts of the different control strategies being explored can be calculated without additional model runs, whereas current techniques require additional model runs for each emissions scenario. These sensitivity results will aid policy makers by allowing them to quickly estimate the effects of different scenarios and determine the optimum allocation of resources and emissions reductions from both a regional and global perspective.