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Kim Knowlton,¹ Joyce E. Rosenthal,¹ Christian Hogrefe,² Barry Lynn,³ Stuart Gaffin,³ Richard Goldberg,³ Cynthia Rosenzweig,⁴ Kevin Civerolo,⁵ Jia-Yeong Ku,⁵ and Patrick L. Kinney¹

¹Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA; ²Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York, USA; ³Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research, New York, New York, USA; ⁴National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA; ⁵New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Bureau of Air Research, Albany, New York, USA

Abstract
Climate change may increase the frequency and intensity of ozone episodes in future summers in the United States. However, only recently have models become available that can assess the impact of climate change on O₃ concentrations and health effects at regional and local scales that are relevant to adaptive planning. We developed and applied an integrated modeling framework to assess potential O₃-related health impacts in future decades under a changing climate. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Institute for Space Studies global climate model at 4° 5° resolution was linked to the Penn State/National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model 5 and the Community Multiscale Air Quality atmospheric chemistry model at 36 km horizontal grid resolution to simulate hourly regional meteorology and O₃ in five summers of the 2050s decade across the 31-county New York metropolitan region. We assessed changes in O₃-related impacts on summer mortality resulting from climate change alone and with climate change superimposed on changes in O₃ precursor emissions and population growth. Considering climate change alone, there was a median 4.5% increase in O₃-related acute mortality across the 31 counties. Incorporating O₃ precursor emission increases along with climate change yielded similar results. When population growth was factored into the projections, absolute impacts increased substantially. Counties with the highest percent increases in projected O₃ mortality spread beyond the urban core into less densely populated suburban counties. This modeling framework provides a potentially useful new tool for assessing the health risks of climate change. Key words: air pollution, climate change, global warming, mortality, ozone. Environ Health Perspect 112:1557-1563 (2004) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7163 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 16 August 2004]

Address correspondence to K. Knowlton, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 60 Haven Ave., B-1, New York, NY 10032 USA. Telephone: (212) 305-3464. Fax: (212) 305-4012. E-mail: kmk47@columbia.edu

We thank T. Holloway for her valuable contribution.

This research has been funded by STAR grant R828733 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) . Additional support was provided by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center grant ES09089 and from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Institute for Space Studies Climate Impacts Group.

This research has not been subjected to any U.S. EPA review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 6 April 2004 ; accepted 16 August 2004.