7 research outputs found
Adapting air quality management for a changing climate: Survey of local districts in California
<p>Air quality can be affected by weather and thus is sensitive to a changing climate. Wildfire (influenced by weather), consecutive high temperature summer days, and other extreme events are projected to become more severe and frequent with climate change. These may create challenging conditions for managing air quality despite policy targets to reduce precursor and pollutant emissions. Although extreme events are becoming more intense and interest in climate adaptation is increasing among public health practitioners, little attention in scholarly literature and policy covers climate adaptation for air quality governance. Understanding the management and managers’ perspectives at the local level provides insight about the needs for climate adaptation, including their adaptation status, perspectives, responsibilities, and roles. This study explores local manager perspectives and experiences of managing air quality within a changing climate as one puzzle piece to understand the gap in climate adaptation within the air quality sector. A broader goal is to contribute to the discussion of developing a multi-jurisdictional vision for reducing the impacts of air quality in a changing climate. In 2016 local air quality district managers in California were invited to participate in an online survey of 39 questions focused on extreme event impacts on air quality. The questionnaire focused on present air quality threats and extreme event challenges, adaptation status and strategies, adaptive capacities, perceived barriers to adaptation, and jurisdictional responsibilities and roles. Over 85 percent of the 35 local air districts in California participated in the survey, which represents 80 percent of the state’s population. High awareness and knowledge of climate change among local managers indicates they are ready to adopt and take action on policies that would support climate adaptation, but barriers reported suggests they may need policies and adequate funding to take action and make necessary changes.</p> <p><i>Implications</i>: Downscaled global climate models project an increasing severity and frequency of extreme events. In the southwestern United States, these include wildfire, heat events, and dry periods, among others, all of which can place an extra burden on air quality managers and emitters to achieve air quality standards even as they reduce emissions. Despite climate change presenting increasing challenges to meet air quality standards, in the southwestern United States, policy and action to mitigate these impacts have been surprisingly absent. California presents a valuable case study on the topic because of its historic leadership in air quality management for the United States and also because of its initiatives in combating climate change. Yet still we found that adaptation has not been incorporated into air quality management thus far, but local managers seem sufficiently knowledgeable and willing.</p
Country-level dependence on coral reef ecosystem services and future risk of coral bleaching.
<p>Bleaching risk is indicated by the year when DHW8 is first reached annually, under RCP8.5 scenario [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0164699#pone.0164699.ref024" target="_blank">24</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0164699#pone.0164699.ref025" target="_blank">25</a>]. Ocean Provinces are indicated in each panel in bold. Earlier years indicate increased bleaching risk.</p
Regional dependence, by ocean province [49], on ecosystem services and average CO<sub>2</sub>-related threats (ocean acidification measured as projected Ω<sub>ar</sub> levels at coral reefs in 2050 and elevated sea surface temperature as measured by year that 8 DHW are projected to occur annually).
<p>The horizontal line in the threats panel represents the mean threat for all regions (scores above this line indicate above average severity of threat). The scales for the reef fish dependence scores are broken to reduce the size of the graph. Note that the Great Barrier Reef Ocean Province includes, but is not limited to, the Great Barrier Reef.</p
Scores of human dependence on coral reef ecosystem services, by country.
<p>Panel A provides the normalized scores for human dependence on shoreline protection, Panel B shows the normalized scores for dependence on reef fisheries, and Panel C shows combined human dependence. All scores are normalized on a scale from 0–10. Higher scores reflect higher human dependence. Countries are binned by quintile in the legend.</p
A conceptual diagram linking stresses related to increased atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> (elevated sea surface temperature and ocean acidification), storms, and local stressors to coral reef condition, selected ecosystem services provided by reefs, and human dependence on these ecosystem services.
<p>Solid lines represent relationships evaluated in this study.</p
Raw data and results of the normalized scoring for human dependence, by country (only countries for which data are available are shown).
<p>Ocean Provinces: Brazilian (B), Caribbean (C), Central Pacific (CP), Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Central Indian Ocean (CIO), Eastern Pacific (EP), Middle East (ME), Polynesia (P), South East Asia (SEA), Western Australia (WA), Western Indian Ocean (WIO).</p
Country-level dependence on coral reef ecosystem services and future combined normalized scores (2–20) for CO<sub>2</sub>-related threats (e.g. ocean acidification and thermal stress).
<p>Ocean Provinces are indicated in each panel in bold. Higher scores indicate higher dependence and higher ecological risk.</p