Increasing temperatures due to climate change will shift climatic conditions, resulting in worse air quality by increasing the number of days with high concentrations of ozone, according to a new journal article on air quality throughout the Mid-Atlantic region from researchers at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment(CEOE).
Increasing temperatures due to climate change will shift climatic conditions, resulting in worse air quality by increasing the number of days with high concentrations of ozone, according to a new journal article on air quality throughout the Mid-Atlantic region from researchers at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment(CEOE).
Cristina Archer led a team from CEOE as the members compiled nearly 50 years’ worth of data from Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) air monitoring and climate models to analyze climatic trends. They found that rising temperatures will increase the number of days in a year where ozone levels in Earth’s lower atmosphere become dangerous.
Archer said DNREC, which funded her study, is concerned with near-ground ozone levels for two main reasons: impacts on human health and compliance with federal and state regulations limiting high-ozone concentrations.
“Ozone has large negative impacts on health, especially affecting the cardiopulmonary and respiratory systems,” Archer said. “It is especially bad if you already have a respiratory condition, asthma, for example, or an infection. In Delaware, we are barely in attainment or slightly in non-attainment (of ozone regulations). When we are not in attainment, the Environmental Protection Agency has to act. That is the relevance. That is why we need to know now there is a problem, so we can act on it.”
Read more at: University of Delaware
Increasing global temperatures will impact air quality.(Photo Credit: Jeffrey C. Chase)
