IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32307.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mortality Burden From Wildfire Smoke Under Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Minghao Qiu
  • Jessica Li
  • Carlos F. Gould
  • Renzhi Jing
  • Makoto Kelp
  • Marissa Childs
  • Mathew Kiang
  • Sam Heft-Neal
  • Noah Diffenbaugh
  • Marshall Burke

Abstract

Wildfire activity has increased in the US and is projected to accelerate under future climate change. However, our understanding of the impacts of climate change on wildfire smoke and health remains highly uncertain. We quantify the past and future mortality burden in the US due to wildfire smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5). We construct an ensemble of statistical and machine learning models that link variation in climate to wildfire smoke PM2.5, and empirically estimate smoke PM2.5-mortality relationships using georeferenced data on all recorded deaths in the US from 2006 to 2019. We project that climate-driven increases in future smoke PM2.5 could result in 27,800 excess deaths per year by 2050 under a high warming scenario, a 76% increase relative to estimated 2011-2020 averages. Cumulative excess deaths from wildfire smoke PM2.5 could exceed 700,000 between 2025-2055. When monetized, climate-induced smoke deaths result in annual damages of $244 billion by mid-century, comparable to the estimated sum of all other damages in the US in prior analyses. Our research suggests that the health cost of climate-driven wildfire smoke could be among the most important and costly consequences of a warming climate in the US.

Suggested Citation

  • Minghao Qiu & Jessica Li & Carlos F. Gould & Renzhi Jing & Makoto Kelp & Marissa Childs & Mathew Kiang & Sam Heft-Neal & Noah Diffenbaugh & Marshall Burke, 2024. "Mortality Burden From Wildfire Smoke Under Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 32307, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32307
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32307.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32307. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.