Climate change continues to challenge food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) across the globe and will figure prominently in shaping future decisions on how best to manage this nexus. In turn, traditionally engineered and natural infrastructures jointly support and hence determine FEWS performance, their vulnerabilities, and their resilience in light of extreme climate events. We present here a research framework to advance the modeling, data integration, and assessment capabilities that support hypothesis-driven research on FEWS dynamics cast at the macro-regional scale. The framework was developed to support studies on climate-induced extremes on food, energy, and water systems (C-FEWS) and designed to identify and evaluate response options to extreme climate events in the context of managing traditionally engineered (TEI) and nature-based infrastructures (NBI). This paper presents our strategy for a first stage of research using the framework to analyze contemporary FEWS and their sensitivity to climate drivers shaped by historical conditions (1980–2019). We offer a description of the computational framework, working definitions of the climate extremes analyzed, and example configurations of numerical experiments aimed at evaluating the importance of individual and combined driving variables. Single and multiple factor experiments involving the historical time series enable two categories of outputs to be analyzed: the first involving biogeophysical entities (e.g., crop production, carbon sequestered, nutrient and thermal pollution loads) and the second reflecting a portfolio of services provided by the region’s TEI and NBI, evaluated in economic terms. The framework is exercised in a series of companion papers in this special issue that focus on the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States. Use of the C-FEWS framework to simulate historical conditions facilitates research to better identify existing FEWS linkages and how they function. The framework also enables a next stage of analysis to be pursued using future scenario pathways that will vary land use, technology deployments, regulatory objectives, and climate trends and extremes. It also supports a stakeholder engagement effort to co-design scenarios of interest beyond the research domain.
Two major environmental issues, air quality and climate change, are interlinked because of their large dependence on atmospheric emissions from human activities, especially from the burning of fossil fuels. Emission of air pollutants and heat trapping gases have greatly increased over the last five decades from our dependence throughout the world on conventional fossil fuel sources in production of electricity and in transportation systems, resulting in significant environmental issues with air quality and climate change throughout our planet. Future emissions of pollutants will depend on the choices made about our use of energy and transportation. The purpose of this study is to examine for now and into the future the relationship between energy production, the associated use of fossil fuels, and resulting effects on air pollution. In the process, we examine a clean energy future, imagined in this case for 2050, and then consider the resulting potential effects on air quality.
Poor air quality has a significant negative impact on human health. Of particular concern globally are ground level concentrations of ozone (O 3 ) and fine particles, especially those smaller than 2.5 microns (PM 2.5 ). Conventional energy sources like coal, oil, and natural gas (all referred to hereafter as fossil fuels), and associated products like gasoline and diesel fuel used in transportation, along with biomass burning, are major contributors to air pollution. The use of fossil fuels in energy production and transportation is also the most important contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, contributing >80% of the human-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and is a major source of methane (CH 4 ), the two gases of most concern to the changing climate (IPCC, 2013(IPCC, , 2018(IPCC, , 2021 NCA4, 2017NCA4, , 2018. This use of fossil fuels also contributes both directly (emitting primary particles like black carbon (BC)) and indirectly (emitting precursors for ozone and other particulates like sulfates and nitrates). Fossil fuel use is a major anthropogenic source of emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO x ), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), and other gases and particles that contribute to air pollution levels. In much of the last century, these pollutants had significant impact on global human health, ranging from increased cardio-pulmonary disease to premature deaths (
Change to global climate, including both its progressive character and episodic extremes, constitutes a critical societal challenge. We apply here a framework to analyze Climate-induced Extremes on the Food, Energy, Water System Nexus (C-FEWS), with particular emphasis on the roles and sensitivities of traditionally-engineered (TEI) and nature-based (NBI) infrastructures. The rationale and technical specifications for the overall C-FEWS framework, its component models and supporting datasets are detailed in an accompanying paper (Vörösmarty et al., this issue). We report here on initial results produced by applying this framework in two important macro-regions of the United States (Northeast, NE; Midwest, MW), where major decisions affecting global food production, biofuels, energy security and pollution abatement require critical scientific support. We present the essential FEWS-related hypotheses that organize our work with an overview of the methodologies and experimental designs applied. We report on initial C-FEWS framework results using five emblematic studies that highlight how various combinations of climate sensitivities, TEI-NBI deployments, technology, and environmental management have determined regional FEWS performance over a historical time period (1980–2019). Despite their relative simplicity, these initial scenario experiments yielded important insights. We found that FEWS performance was impacted by climate stress, but the sensitivity was strongly modified by technology choices applied to both ecosystems (e.g., cropland production using new cultivars) and engineered systems (e.g., thermoelectricity from different fuels and cooling types). We tabulated strong legacy effects stemming from decisions on managing NBI (e.g., multi-decade land conversions that limit long-term carbon sequestration). The framework also enabled us to reveal how broad-scale policies aimed at a particular net benefit can result in unintended and potentially negative consequences. For example, tradeoff modeling experiments identified the regional importance of TEI in the form wastewater treatment and NBI via aquatic self-purification. This finding, in turn, could be used to guide potential investments in point and/or non-point source water pollution control. Another example used a reduced complexity model to demonstrate a FEWS tradeoff in the context of water supply, electricity production, and thermal pollution. Such results demonstrated the importance of TEI and NBI in jointly determining historical FEWS performance, their vulnerabilities, and their resilience to extreme climate events. These infrastructures, plus technology and environmental management, constitute the “policy levers” which can actively be engaged to mitigate the challenge of contemporary and future climate change.
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