Dataset Information

Evaluating Changes in Health Risk from Drought over the Contiguous United States.

ABSTRACT: The outcomes of drought can be difficult to assess due to the complexity of its effects. While most risk assessments of drought are developed for agriculture or water resources, the associations with human health are not well studied due to unclear and complex pathways. This study is the first to assess potential changes in health risk from droughts during the last decade in the contiguous United States. To assess the risk, we spatially superimposed vulnerability variables associated with drought on historical drought exposure over the last decade. Different variations in Local Moran's I statistics were used to assess the spatial distribution of health vulnerability, risk of drought, and changes in the two five-year study periods (2010-2014 and 2015-2019). Our results show large clusters of the western United States had a significant increase in risk during the latter part of the study period due to increases in vulnerability and hazard. In addition, southern areas of the United States were consistently above the national average in drought risk. Since our vulnerability variables include agriculture, drinking water, and sociodemographic indicators, the results of this study can help various experts interested in drought preparedness efforts associated with human health.

SUBMITTER: Jalalzadeh Fard B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9031499 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evaluating Changes in Health Risk from Drought over the Contiguous United States.

Jalalzadeh Fard Babak B Puvvula Jagadeesh J Bell Jesse E JE

International journal of environmental research and public health 20220412 8

The outcomes of drought can be difficult to assess due to the complexity of its effects. While most risk assessments of drought are developed for agriculture or water resources, the associations with human health are not well studied due to unclear and complex pathways. This study is the first to assess potential changes in health risk from droughts during the last decade in the contiguous United States. To assess the risk, we spatially superimposed vulnerability variables associated with drough ...[more]

PMID: 35457515

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Project description:Dynamic evaluation of the fully coupled Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)- Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model ozone simulations over the contiguous United States (CONUS) using two decades of simulations covering the period from 1990 to 2010 is conducted to assess how well the changes in observed ozone air quality are simulated by the model. The changes induced by variations in meteorology and/or emissions are also evaluated during the same timeframe using spectral decomposition of observed and modeled ozone time series with the aim of identifying the underlying forcing mechanisms that control ozone exceedances and making informed recommendations for the optimal use of regional-scale air quality models. The evaluation is focused on the warm season's (i.e., May-September) daily maximum 8-hr (DM8HR) ozone concentrations, the 4th highest (4th) and average of top 10 DM8HR ozone values (top10), as well as the spectrally-decomposed components of the DM8HR ozone time series using the Kolmogorov-Zurbenko (KZ) filter. Results of the dynamic evaluation are presented for six regions in the U.S., consistent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climatic regions. During the earlier 11-yr period (1990-2000), the simulated and observed trends are not statistically significant. During the more recent 2000-2010 period, all trends are statistically significant and WRF-CMAQ captures the observed trend in most regions. Given large number of sites for the 2000-2010 period, the model captures the observed trends in the Southwest (SW) and MW but has significantly different trend from that seen in observations for the other regions. Observational analysis reveals that it is the long-term forcing that dictates how high the ozone exceedances will be; there is a strong linear relationship between the long-term forcing and the 4th highest or the average of the top10 ozone concentrations in both observations and model output. This finding indicates that improving the model's ability to reproduce the long-term component will also enable better simulation of ozone extreme values that are of interest to regulatory agencies.

Dataset Information

Evaluating Changes in Health Risk from Drought over the Contiguous United States.

Publications

Evaluating Changes in Health Risk from Drought over the Contiguous United States.

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