Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate

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Significance

We assessed the effects of air pollution and greenhouse gases on public health, climate, and the hydrologic cycle. We combined a global atmospheric chemistry–climate model with air pollution exposure functions, based on an unmatched large number of cohort studies in many countries. We find that fossil-fuel-related emissions account for about 65% of the excess mortality rate attributable to air pollution, and 70% of the climate cooling by anthropogenic aerosols. We conclude that to save millions of lives and restore aerosol-perturbed rainfall patterns, while limiting global warming to 2 °C, a rapid phaseout of fossil-fuel-related emissions and major reductions of other anthropogenic sources are needed.

Abstract

Anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols are associated with climate change and human health risks. We used a global model to estimate the climate and public health outcomes attributable to fossil fuel use, indicating the potential benefits of a phaseout. We show that it can avoid an excess mortality rate of 3.61 (2.96–4.21) million per year from outdoor air pollution worldwide. This could be up to 5.55 (4.52–6.52) million per year by additionally controlling nonfossil anthropogenic sources. Globally, fossil-fuel-related emissions account for about 65% of the excess mortality, and 70% of the climate cooling by anthropogenic aerosols. The chemical influence of air pollution on aeolian dust contributes to the aerosol cooling. Because aerosols affect the hydrologic cycle, removing the anthropogenic emissions in the model increases rainfall by 10–70% over densely populated regions in India and 10–30% over northern China, and by 10–40% over Central America, West Africa, and the drought-prone Sahel, thus contributing to water and food security. Since aerosols mask the anthropogenic rise in global temperature, removing fossil-fuel-generated particles liberates 0.51(±0.03) °C and all pollution particles 0.73(±0.03) °C warming, reaching around 2 °C over North America and Northeast Asia. The steep temperature increase from removing aerosols can be moderated to about 0.36(±0.06) °C globally by the simultaneous reduction of tropospheric ozone and methane. We conclude that a rapid phaseout of fossil-fuel-related emissions and major reductions of other anthropogenic sources are needed to save millions of lives, restore aerosol-perturbed rainfall patterns, and limit global warming to 2 °C.

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Most cited references 38

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What can we say about changes in the hydrologic cycle on 50-year timescales when we cannot predict rainfall next week? Eventually, perhaps, a great deal: the overall climate response to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases may prove much simpler and more predictable than the chaos of short-term weather. Quantifying the diversity of possible responses is essential for any objective, probability-based climate forecast, and this task will require a new generation of climate modelling experiments, systematically exploring the range of model behaviour that is consistent with observations. It will be substantially harder to quantify the range of possible changes in the hydrologic cycle than in global-mean temperature, both because the observations are less complete and because the physical constraints are weaker.

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Human activities are releasing tiny particles (aerosols) into the atmosphere. These human-made aerosols enhance scattering and absorption of solar radiation. They also produce brighter clouds that are less efficient at releasing precipitation. These in turn lead to large reductions in the amount of solar irradiance reaching Earth's surface, a corresponding increase in solar heating of the atmosphere, changes in the atmospheric temperature structure, suppression of rainfall, and less efficient removal of pollutants. These aerosol effects can lead to a weaker hydrological cycle, which connects directly to availability and quality of fresh water, a major environmental issue of the 21st century.

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The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the "dust bowl" era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4-1.0 m if 21st century CO(2) concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6-1.9 m for peak CO(2) concentrations exceeding approximately 1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A

Journal ID (hwp): pnas

Journal ID (pmc): pnas

Journal ID (publisher-id): PNAS

Title: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Publisher: National Academy of Sciences

ISSN (Print): 0027-8424

ISSN (Electronic): 1091-6490

Publication date (Print): 9 April 2019

Publication date (Electronic): 25 March 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 25 March 2019

Volume: 116

Issue: 15

Pages: 7192-7197

Affiliations

[1] ^aDepartment of Atmospheric Chemistry, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry , 55128 Mainz, Germany;

[2] ^bEnergy, Environment and Water Research Center, The Cyprus Institute , 1645 Nicosia, Cyprus;

[3] ^cPopulation Studies Division, Health Canada , Ottawa, ON K1A 0K9, Canada;

[4] ^dDepartment of Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine , London WC1 9SH, United Kingdom;

[5] ^eScripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego , La Jolla, CA 92093-0221

Author notes

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jos.lelieveld@ 123456mpic.de .

Edited by Susan Solomon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and approved February 27, 2019 (received for review November 27, 2018)

Author contributions: J.L. designed research; J.L., K.K., and A.P. performed research; R.T.B. contributed new analytic tools; J.L., K.K., A.P., A.H., and V.R. analyzed data; and J.L., A.H., and V.R. wrote the paper.