An important policy question in China is how to equitably allocate the responsibility for reducing carbon emissions. China has already introduced provincial targets to achieve a national carbon intensity reduction of 17% in its Twelfth Five-Year Plan, and the design of a cap-and-trade system is currently under discussion. Using a computable general equilibrium model with energy system detail, we assess alternative criteria--production emissions, consumption emissions, and a shared production and consumption metric--for allocating the national CO2 intensity target across provinces, and compare them to the existing politically-negotiated targets. We show how economic cost can be lowered and equity goals addressed by employing a permit trading mechanism and how equity goals can be achieved through the choice of index used to determine the initial allocation. We find that adjusting the provincial targets on a consumption basis increases the emissions-reduction burden for the eastern provinces by about 60%, while alleviating the burden for the central and western provinces by about 50% each. This adjustment makes meeting policy targets more expensive--the CGE analysis indicates that this adjustment could double China's national welfare loss compared to the homogenous and politically-based distribution of reduction targets. The welfare losses for the eastern provinces increase by a factor of four, while providing little relief for the central and western provinces. A shared-responsibility approach that balances production-based and consumption-based emissions responsibilities alleviates those unbalancing effects and lead to a more equal distribution of economic burden among China's provinces. An emissions-trading system (ETS) that achieves the same reduction and applies various criteria to determine the initial allocation lowers the cost relative to all corresponding intensity target scenarios while still addressing equity concerns.

We use regional air quality modeling to evaluate the impact of model resolution on uncertainty associated with the human health benefits resulting from proposed air quality regulations. Using a regional photochemical model (CAMx), we ran a modeling episode with meteorological inputs simulating conditions as they occurred during August through September 2006 (a period representative of conditions leading to high ozone), and two emissions inventories (a 2006 base case and a 2018 proposed control scenario, both for Houston, Texas) at 36, 12, 4 and 2 km resolution. The base case model performance was evaluated for each resolution against daily maximum 8-h averaged ozone measured at monitoring stations. Results from each resolution were more similar to each other than they were to measured values. Population-weighted ozone concentrations were calculated for each resolution and applied to concentration response functions (with 95% confidence intervals) to estimate the health impacts of modeled ozone reduction from the base case to the control scenario. We found that estimated avoided mortalities were not significantly different between the 2, 4 and 12 km resolution runs, but the 36 km resolution may over-predict some potential health impacts. Given the cost/benefit analysis requirements motivated by Executive Order 12866 as it applies to the Clean Air Act, the uncertainty associated with human health impacts and therefore the results reported in this study, we conclude that health impacts calculated from population weighted ozone concentrations obtained using regional photochemical models at 36 km resolution fall within the range of values obtained using fine (12 km or finer) resolution modeling. However, in some cases, 36 km resolution may not be fine enough to statistically replicate the results achieved using 2, 4 or 12 km resolution. On average, when modeling at 36 km resolution, an estimated 5 deaths per week during the May through September ozone season are avoided because of ozone reductions resulting from the proposed emissions reductions (95% confidence interval was 2–8). When modeling at 2, 4 or 12 km finer scale resolution, on average 4 deaths are avoided due to the same reductions (95% confidence interval was 1–7). Study results show that ozone modeling at a resolution finer than 12 km is unlikely to reduce uncertainty in benefits analysis for this specific region. We suggest that 12 km resolution may be appropriate for uncertainty analyses of health impacts due to ozone control scenarios, in areas with similar chemistry, meteorology and population density, but that resolution requirements should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and revised as confidence intervals for concentration-response functions are updated.

©2012 the Authors

Land ecosystems in northern Eurasia will be under a variety of pressures in the 21st century that will affect both their structure and function. Climate change and land-use change are likely to be the major pressures. Climate change will lead to changes in disturbance regimes such as fire and changes in the distribution of plant and animal species. Land-use changes, driven by population growth, resource consumption and a broad set of economic considerations, will interact with climate-driven changes to reshape the earth’s landscape. Here we present results of an integrated assessment analysis for the region that examines the consequences of concurrent pressures on land ecosystems associated with climate and land-use changes. Preliminary results indicate that climate-induced vegetation shifts allow more areas in northern Eurasia to be used for food crop production (an additional 23%) and pastures (an additional 38%), but limits the additional area to be used as managed forests (38% less) by the end of the 21st century than is projected when vegetation shifts are not considered and no climate policy is implemented. In contrast, under a climate policy, climate-induced vegetation shifts had little influence on food production, but allow more area to be used for cellulosic biofuel production (an additional 23%), and less additional area to be used for pasture (50% less) and managed forests (28% less) over this same time period. Fire associated with climateinduced vegetation shifts causes the region to become a carbon source over the 21st century whereas the region is projected to be a carbon sink if no vegetation shifts are assumed to occur. Thus, consideration of vegetation shifts should be included in future assessments of environmental change on terrestrial carbon budgets in this region.

Over the past three decades, Antarctic surface climate has undergone pronounced changes. Many of these changes have been linked to stratospheric ozone depletion. Here linkages between Antarctic ozone loss, the accompanying circulation changes, and summertime Southern Hemisphere (SH) midlatitude surface temperatures are explored. Long-term surface climate changes associated with ozone-driven changes in the southern annular mode (SAM) at SH midlatitudes in summer are not annular in appearance owing to differences in regional circulation and precipitation impacts. Both station and reanalysis data indicate a trend toward cooler summer temperatures over southeast and south-central Australia and inland areas of the southern tip of Africa. It is also found that since the onset of the ozone hole, there have been significant shifts in the distributions of both the seasonal mean and daily maximum summertime temperatures in the SH midlatitude regions between high and low ozone years. Unusually hot summer extremes are associated with anomalously high ozone in the previous November, including the recent very hot austral summer of 2012/13. If the relationship found in the past three decades continues to hold, the level of late springtime ozone over Antarctica has the potential to be part of a useful predictor set for the following summer’s conditions. The results herein suggest that skillful predictions may be feasible for both the mean seasonal temperature and the frequency of extreme hot events in some SH midlatitude regions of Australia, Africa, and South America.

© 2014 American Meteorological Society