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Creators/Authors contains: "Kerr, Gaige Hunter"

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  1. Abstract

    Despite improvements in ambient air quality in the US in recent decades, many people still experience unhealthy levels of pollution. At present, national‐level alert‐day identification relies predominately on surface monitor networks and forecasters. Satellite‐based estimates of surface air quality have rapidly advanced and have the capability to inform exposure‐reducing actions to protect public health. At present, we lack a robust framework to quantify public health benefits of these advances in applications of satellite‐based atmospheric composition data. Here, we assess possible health benefits of using geostationary satellite data, over polar orbiting satellite data, for identifying particulate air quality alert days (24hr PM2.5 > 35 μg m−3) in 2020. We find the more extensive spatiotemporal coverage of geostationary satellite data leads to a 60% increase in identification of person‐alerts (alert days × population) in 2020 over polar‐orbiting satellite data. We apply pre‐existing estimates of PM2.5exposure reduction by individual behavior modification and find these additional person‐alerts may lead to 1,200 (800–1,500) or 54% more averted PM2.5‐attributable premature deaths per year, if geostationary, instead of polar orbiting, satellite data alone are used to identify alert days. These health benefits have an associated economic value of 13 (8.8–17) billion dollars ($2019) per year. Our results highlight one of many potential applications of atmospheric composition data from geostationary satellites for improving public health. Identifying these applications has important implications for guiding use of current satellite data and planning future geostationary satellite missions.

     
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  3. Abstract

    The daily variation of ground‐level ozone (O3), a harmful pollutant, is positively correlated with air temperature (T) in many midlatitude land regions in the summer. The observed temporal regression slope between O3andT(dO3/dT) is referred to as the “ozone‐climate change penalty” and has been proposed as a way to predict the impact of future climate warming on O3from observations. Here, we use two chemical transport models to show that the spatial variation of dO3/dTis primarily determined by simultaneous meridional advection of O3andT. Furthermore, the sign and magnitude of dO3/dTcan be approximated by their climatological meridional gradient ratio (O3gradient divided byTgradient). Consideration of expected changes in the meridional gradients ofTand O3due to climate change indicates that dO3/dTwill likely change. Caution is needed when using the observed climate penalty to predict O3changes.

     
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