LCI - Climate Change

Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases cause the future climate to change. This change in climate affects the Areas of Protection ‘Human Health’ and ‘Ecosystem quality’, the latter is divided into freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.

Cause-effect pathway

The emission of greenhouse gases will cause a rise in the earth’s atmospheric temperature which ultimately leads to increased damage to Human health and Ecosystems. This overview will focus on the human health effects only.

Modeling approach

A marginal approach for calculating the characterization factors is followed, meaning that the additional impact of a marginal increase in greenhouse gas emissions using today’s situation as the reference state. Impact is measured in disability adjusted life years for human health (DALYs).

Value choices

A number of choices have been made for the calculation of the characterization factors, namely:

The time horizon over which effects are assessed

Whether or not to include future adaptation to climate change

Whether future socio-economic development will be favorable or not

Depending on which future scenario one chooses, different effects may be considered certain or uncertain. These are summarized below:

	Core CF	Extended CF (in addition to core)
Time horizon (applies to all areas of protection)	100 years	100 - 1000 years
Human Health	Diarrhea Malaria Coastal flooding	Cardiovascular disease Malnutrition Inland flooding

Spatial variability

Climate change is a global phenomenon; the effect of the greenhouse gas is location-independent because the emitted greenhouse gas is assumed to spread evenly throughout the entire atmosphere.

Characterisation factors

The following equation can be used to calculate the characterisation factors (CF):

CF_x,TH,AOP = GWP_x,TH · δTEMP_CO₂,TH ·EF _AOP

where GWP is the Global Warming Potential of greenhouse gas x. TH is the time horizon δTEMP is the temperature increase due to the release of 1 kg of CO₂ and EF is the effect factor for a given Area Of Protection (AOP), in this case Human Health.

GWPs are used to compare the effect of different greenhouse gases relative to the reference gas (CO₂), because the atmospheric lifetimes of greenhouse gases differ they are time-horizon dependent. By multiplying the GWP (in kg CO₂ equivalents) by the effect of CO₂ on the global temperature increase and the effect factor of a temperature increase on human health can be obtained.