Extreme Pollution Episodes - Climate, Health and Societal Impacts

Extreme pollution episodes occur worldwide as a result of multiple factors including high anthropogenic emissions and wildfire emissions. I am particularly interested in wildfires which have become a frequent occurrence in both developed and developing countries, as a result of a warming climate, uncontrolled agricultural practices or are intentionally lit by humans. We use high resolution regional model simulations to investigate spatio-temporal patterns of these events and to assess the associated population exposure and mortality burden as well as changes to the Earth’s climate.

Relevant Publications:

1. Alifa, M., S. Castruccio, D. Bolster, M.A. Bravo, and P. Crippa, (2023). Uncertainty reduction and environmental justice in air pollution epidemiology: the importance of minority representation, GeoHealth, 7(10): p. e2023GH000854.
2. Alifa, M., Castruccio, S., Diogo, B., Bravo, M., Crippa, P., (2022). Information entropy tradeoffs for efficient uncertainty reduction in estimates of air pollution mortality, Environmental Research, 212: 113587, doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2022.113587.
3. Alifa, M., Bolster, D., Mead, M. I., Latif, M. T. and Crippa, P. (2020), The influence of meteorology and emissions on the spatio-temporal variability of PM₁₀ in Malaysia, Atmospheric Research, 246, 105107, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2020.105107.
4. Crippa, P., Castruccio, S., Archer-Nicholls, S., Lebron, G.B., Kuwata, M., Thota, A., Sumin, S., Butt, E., Wiedinmyer, C., Spracklen, D.V. (2016): Population exposure to hazardous air quality due to the 2015 fires in Equatorial Asia, Nature Scientific Reports, 6, 37074, doi:10.1038/srep37074.
5. Mead, M.I., Castruccio, S., Latif, M.T., Nadzir, M.S.M., Dominick, D., Thota, A., Crippa, P. (2018): Impact of the 2015 Wildfires on Malaysian Air Quality and Exposure: A Comparative Study of Observed and Modeled Data, Environmental Research Letters, 13(4), 044023.