Future Fire Impacts on Smoke Concentrations, Visibility, and Health in the Contiguous United States

Fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) from U.S. anthropogenic sources is decreasing. However, previous studies have predicted that PM(2.5) emissions from wildfires will increase in the midcentury to next century, potentially offsetting improvements gained by continued reductions in anthropogenic emissions. Therefore, some regions could experience worse air quality, degraded visibility, and increases in population‐level exposure. We use global climate model simulations to estimate the impacts of changing fire emissions on air quality, visibility, and premature deaths in the middle and late 21st century. We find that PM(2.5) concentrations will decrease overall in the contiguous United States (CONUS) due to decreasing anthropogenic emissions (total PM(2.5) decreases by 3% in Representative Concentration Pathway [RCP] 8.5 and 34% in RCP4.5 by 2100), but increasing fire‐related PM(2.5) (fire‐related PM(2.5) increases by 55% in RCP4.5 and 190% in RCP8.5 by 2100) offsets these benefits and causes increases in total PM(2.5) in some regions. We predict that the average visibility will improve across the CONUS, but fire‐related PM(2.5) will reduce visibility on the worst days in western and southeastern U.S. regions. We estimate that the number of deaths attributable to total PM(2.5) will decrease in both the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios (from 6% to 4–5%), but the absolute number of premature deaths attributable to fire‐related PM(2.5) will double compared to early 21st century. We provide the first estimates of future smoke health and visibility impacts using a prognostic land‐fire model. Our results suggest the importance of using realistic fire emissions in future air quality projections.