How artificial intelligence can help save us from air pollution
Researchers find AI may outperform traditional models, which could give more advance warning of bad air days, and reduce harmful exposures and hospital visits.
As air quality plummets across the U.S. this summer, researchers have a glimmer of good news.
Artificial intelligence may soon provide advanced warning of future pollution events, which could help hospitals prepare for the uptick in pollution-related illnesses, or even reduce people's exposure entirely.
A spike in air pollution often leads to a spike in hospital admissions, as it can exacerbate asthma and other pre-existing respiratory conditions, cause upper respiratory tract infections, or increase the likelihood of stroke. But it's currently impossible to prepare for these spikes due to the constraints of existing air quality forecasts, which are only accurate up to three days in advance, Yunsoo Choi, associate professor of atmospheric chemistry from the University of Houston, told EHN.
In that short amount of time, one of the only things we can do to protect ourselves is to limit time spent outdoors.
But now, through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Choi and the University of Houston's Air Quality Forecasting and Modeling Lab created a new model that can predict ozone pollution up to 14 days ahead of time.
While ozone in the upper atmosphere shields us from the sun's ultraviolet radiation, ozone at ground-level is a harmful pollutant that irritates our lungs. Since it is formed in the atmosphere on hot, sunny days, we will see unprecedented spikes in ozone due to climate change, similar to what we witnessed across the U.S. during the country's most recent heat wave.
These models could give local governments more opportunities to control pollution emission sources.
"Having a model that runs faster allows [local governments] to explore a greater variety of scenarios of how they can improve [air quality]," Sherri Hunt, the Principal Associate National Program Director for the Air, Climate and Energy Research Program at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told EHN. Hunt was not involved in this study. For example, if researchers determine the future high ozone event will be caused by cars, then policymakers can suggest ways to minimize the number of cars on the road.
In addition, with Choi's AI model, "we could decide how we're going to staff the emergency room" during bad air events, Hunt said.
Artificial intelligence to improve air quality forecasting
Yunsoo Choi, left, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston, and Ph.D. student Alqamah Sayeed developed a new model to better predict ozone levels. (University of Houston)
Traditional air quality forecasts are created by numerical models, which are essentially sophisticated calculators. They solve many lines of mathematical equations to determine how much pollution will be produced, and how it will be transported across an area at a given point in time.
These equations aren't solved only once. They have to be solved for each hour the model forecasts into the future, which takes a lot of time and computational power.
"In order to forecast two or three days...that takes a few hours" even with a supercomputer, said Choi.
AI models predict ozone without these time-consuming calculations. Instead, researchers "train" the model by providing past air quality data, which the model uses to learn how ozone behaves under different sets of meteorological conditions.
Based on the patterns observed, the model makes an educated guess of how much ozone might be present in the future. It only takes minutes and is more accurate than its predecessors.
The researchers demonstrated this by modeling ozone pollution in South Korea in 2017 after training the AI model on data collected up to three years prior. They then compared their results to the Community Multi-scale Air Quality Model (CMAQ), which is a commonly used numerical model developed by the EPA. Using CMAQ, the model's average accuracy peaked at 77% on day one of predictions and decreased rapidly over the following 14 days. When Choi used artificial intelligence, however, the average accuracy on the first day of predictions was 90%. While this value decreased trailed off over the two weeks, it still performed better than CMAQ did on day one.
Air pollution strain on hospitals
The highly accurate 14-day forecasts of Choi's AI model, combined with its faster computational time, could alleviate stress on our public health system. "We can see real increases in emergency department visits and other cardiovascular and respiratory impacts" following an air pollution event, said Hunt.
For example, one recent study that looked at Medicare patients concluded that exposure to ozone, among other pollutants, might contribute to thousands of additional hospital admissions each year.
Hospitals "have to show that there's a need if they're going to increase their number of beds or their number of providers in a particular area," explained Hunt.
Knowing how pollution levels could change two weeks in advance could help hospital administrators make their case more efficiently.
Climate change and ozone
There's also the matter of climate change, which can influence the amount of ozone produced in the atmosphere due to the uptick of hot, stagnant weather.
But it's hard to update the equations and parameters that numerical models use to calculate pollutant concentrations, said Choi, who has worked with these types of models in the past. "It's not easy to adjust to new types of [weather] phenomena" like heat waves.
On the other hand, however, AI models are much more adaptable. They learn from their mistakes and adjust their predictions accordingly. They can also be retrained with new data to improve their forecasts.
AI technology has limitations. For one, researchers might see that the model is producing the right answer, but they "don't know if the model is getting those things right for the right reasons," said Hunt.
However, "by using [numerical modeling] we can know the all the details of what happened—what kind of chemical or physical properties are critical" in creating high pollution events, said Choi. A combination of both models will likely need to be used in the future.
It's just going to take some time. "Within EPA, I don't know anyone, any of our research scientists, who are using AI techniques," said Hunt.
The agency is, however, funding academic researchers who are focused on improving AI models and integrating them with the technology that exists today.
"Once that work is done that can potentially be brought back to the agency," said Hunt. "We want to use [models] to inform actions to make more people breathe clean air, so if we can make a better tool then that's going to benefit us in a variety of different ways."
PITTSBURGH — On July 17, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed into law a carbon capture and storage bill that creates a legal framework for climate-warming carbon emissions captured from burning fossil fuels to be injected underground and stored indefinitely to prevent them from escaping into the atmosphere.
The bill is controversial because carbon capture and storage technology is still new and scientific researchers have unanswered questions about whether it’s a viable climate solution and whether it will pose health and safety risks to communities.
A handful of environmental advocacy groups supported the bill, including the Clean Air Task Force, which said in a statement that carbon capture and storage technologies will “play a role in decarbonizing the industrial and power sectors of the commonwealth’s energy economy.”
However, around 45 environmental advocacy groups wrote letters urging the Pennsylvania state legislature and Gov. Shapiro not to pass the bill. Those groups have spoken out against the new law, saying in a statement that it guarantees “Pennsylvania will not be part of any climate solution.”
“Governor Shapiro should be ashamed of signing a bill that threatens the public and our environment with the dangers of carbon capture and storage, all for the benefit of special interests, namely the fracking industry,” Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said in a statement. “This is a terrible day for the Commonwealth and we’ll experience the harms far into our future.”
The groups also expressed concern about the unusual way the bill moved through the legislature. In the state House, the bill was never referred to the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, but instead went through the Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee and was advanced without discussion.
As a result, “there were no hearings or discussions,” said Karen Feridun, co-founder of the Better Path Coalition, a Pennsylvania-based environmental advocacy group. “In the end, an unproven, failed technology was deemed to be in the public interest.”
The new law will pave the way for two proposed, federally-funded hydrogen hubs in Pennsylvania that will rely on carbon capture and storage.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
Genevieve Guenther's book, The Language of Climate Politics, claims fossil fuel talking points have permeated climate discussions, skewing public perception and action.
Guenther identifies six problematic terms: alarmist, costs, growth, "India and China," innovation, and resilience, suggesting alternatives to better frame climate discourse.
Despite potential backlash, Guenther emphasizes the need for precise language to effectively advocate for emission reductions and broader climate action.
Key quote:
"To secure a livable future, one thing we will need to do is dismantle and reframe the terms dominating the language of climate politics."
— Genevieve Guenther, Author
Why this matters:
Accurate climate communication is crucial for mobilizing public support and driving policy change, ensuring that discussions align with the urgent need to reduce fossil fuel emissions and mitigate climate impacts. Read more: Greenwashing’s medieval age.
Republicans could defund or dismantle federal environmental agencies, roll back climate regulations, and boost fossil fuel usage.
Key GOP proposals include increasing oil drilling, slashing fees for fossil fuel companies, and cutting funding for clean energy initiatives.
A potential win for Republicans might also see the repeal of Biden’s 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, impacting investments in green technologies.
Key quote:
“There is no doubt that a second Trump administration would pick up where it left off — whether it was conventional energy, oil and gas pipelines, or the market-dictated acceleration of the renewable energy transition.”
— Alex Herrgott, executive director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council under Trump
Climate change is intensifying extreme weather, which disrupts NATO operations and strains resources.
The Arctic's melting ice and depleting fish stocks are expected to increase regional competition and security challenges.
Cyber risks are growing, with climate disinformation campaigns threatening global climate action.
Key quote:
“Climate change exacerbates resource scarcity, leading to conflicts over water and food. It can also impact large-scale migrations, which can destabilize regions and strain national security, leading to humanitarian crises and increased pressure on receiving countries’ resources and infrastructure.”
— Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University
Why this matters:
Climate change is not only an environmental issue but also a significant threat to global security. As extreme weather events become more frequent, NATO must adapt its strategies to ensure readiness and support for civilian authorities in disaster responses.
Several Republican National Convention speakers blamed President Biden's policies for rising gas and electricity prices, but experts attribute the increases to global market forces and other complex factors.
Republicans claimed Biden's policies increased gas and electricity prices.
Experts say global market forces and events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine influenced these price hikes more than Biden's policies.
Former President Trump promised more domestic drilling, but experts argue other factors affect energy prices.
Key quote:
“The bulk of electricity price spikes are the result of ‘increasing cost and volatility of fossil fuels’ and extreme weather events like wildfires.”
— Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at Energy Innovation
Why this matters:
Misleading narratives can cloud public understanding and influence policymakers. For instance, blaming renewable energy for all price increases overlooks the benefits of reducing reliance on fossil fuels and the long-term savings from sustainable energy investments. Conversely, ignoring the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading the grid to accommodate renewables can lead to unrealistic expectations and frustration.
Former President Trump’s environmental policies, including exiting the Paris Agreement and rolling back more than 100 regulations, continue to influence climate efforts both in the U.S. and internationally.
Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and his regulatory rollbacks have had enduring impacts, inspiring similar actions by populist leaders worldwide.
His administration appointed conservative judges, including three Supreme Court justices, who have ruled against federal environmental regulations, complicating Biden’s efforts to reverse Trump’s policies.
Trump’s rhetoric has fueled skepticism about climate policies, influencing political movements in Europe to weaken climate commitments.
Key quote:
“The Trump administration was the most anti-environmental, anti-climate, anti-public health administration we’ve ever had, by far.”
— Tiernen Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters
Why this matters:
Trump’s policies have undermined global climate efforts and set a legal precedent that hampers future regulatory actions. These changes pose significant challenges to achieving long-term climate goals and protecting public health.
As mounds of dredged material from the Houston Ship Channel dot their neighborhoods, residents are left without answers as to what dangers could be lurking.
