Future Global Air Quality indices under different socioeconomic and climate assumptions

Future socioeconomic developments and climate policies will play a role in air quality as greenhouse gases and air pollutants are highly connected. This interactions are complex and air quality indices help to identify the pollution drivers and to compare integrated policies. Here we compute new global air quality indices, for five socioeconomic pathways and covering a broad range of climate policies, using a chemistry transport emulator and the emission database produced for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment report. Our findings show that climate policies are very relevant in reducing air pollution exposure by the mid century, they mainly affect the speed at which the pollution is reduced, while the socioeconomic developments have a greater impact on the magnitude of the pollution levels. All models agree that a 1.5◦C policy target could prevent all regions of the world from exceeding the annual average limit for all the pollutants considered. We show the importance of considering single pollutant and exposure air quality indices, which are more informative at global scale than the pollutant average index.JRC.C.5-Air and Climat