EPA awards WSU nearly $900,000 for Consequences of Global Climate Change for Air Quality Research

Today, the Washington State University (WSU) was awarded a grant for almost $900,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct research to help answer questions about the effects of global climate change on continental and regional air quality in the Pacific Northwest and estimate the uncertainties that are part of these answers.

A team of researchers led by WSU will use models to provide a better overall understanding of the potential impact of global climate change on future air quality including changes in land cover, urbanization, emissions from natural sources and fire emissions. They will focus on ozone and particulate matter and address both ambient concentrations and deposition.

“This grant is follow-on to current EPA funding and gives us the opportunity to take advantage of the team and infrastructure built in the first grant,” said Dr. Brian Lamb, WSU. “This grant will allow us to focus more on the uncertainties associated with the range of possible conditions in the future.”

“This WSU-led research will help us better understand the effects of global climate change in the Pacific Northwest,” said Elin Miller, EPA Regional Administrator. “Environmental protection is everyone’s responsibility, and WSU and their team of researchers are taking steps to make sure that we understand these global changes. EPA is pleased to work with partners - like these in our universities - to protect the Earth’s atmosphere.”

The primary products from this work will be model results for current and future decades for the U.S. and the Pacific Northwest. Results will give a number of emission scenarios so that quantitative estimates of the impacts on air quality and uncertainties associated with both modeling errors and emission scenarios will be obtained.