10th International Aerosol Conference September 2 - September 7, 2018 America's Center Convention Complex St. Louis, Missouri, USA
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Quantifying the Impact of Wildfires on Air Quality and Human Health: the Case of Equatorial Asia
PAOLA CRIPPA, Stefano Castruccio, Mohd Talib Latif, M.S.M. Nadzir, D. Dominick, Mikinori Kuwata, Abhinav Thota, M.I. Mead, Christine Wiedinmyer, University of Notre Dame
Abstract Number: 235 Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract Forest and peat fires have become a frequent occurrence in Equatorial Asia as a result of a warmer and drier climate, uncontrolled agricultural practices and intentional ignition. Air pollutants from wildfires, including carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM), can be transported in the atmosphere for thousands of kilometers from the originating fires and thus significantly impact air quality and human health over wide areas. In this work we focus on the extreme fires occurred in Fall 2015 in Equatorial Asia and assess air quality conditions and associated population exposure. Quantifying the impact of wildfires on human health is currently limited by the lack of integrated studies including both direct Earth observations, modeling tools and health records. In our study we apply a state-of-the-art regional model (WRF-Chem) at high spatio-temporal resolution to characterize air pollution episodes from the 2015 wildfires in Equatorial Asia. Simulated PM and CO concentrations are evaluated against satellite observations and data from a dense ground-based network and indicate high skills of WRF-Chem in capturing both the spatio-temporal variability and magnitude of these events. We estimate that, during September and October 2015, 69 million people were persistently exposed to unhealthy air quality conditions. Further, the short term exposure to the enhanced PM2.5 concentrations from wildfires may have caused 11,880 (6,153–17,270) excess mortalities. Our results indicate that by using a high resolution regional model we can provide unique information to policy makers to coordinate the effort between emitting and exposed countries in improving air quality and reducing population exposure.