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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-3151</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Air quality impacts of Stratospheric Aerosol Injections are small and mainly driven by changes in climate, not deposition</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Cindy</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6783-1672</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Visioni</surname>
<given-names>Daniele</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7342-2189</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chua</surname>
<given-names>Glen</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6002-0957</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Bednarz</surname>
<given-names>Ewa M.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7441-0497</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NY, NY, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory (NOAA CSL), Boulder, CO, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>30</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2025</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>29</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Cindy Wang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3151/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3151/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3151/egusphere-2025-3151.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-3151/egusphere-2025-3151.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is a proposed climate intervention that could potentially reduce future global warming, but its broader environmental and public health implications are yet to be thoroughly explored. Here, we assess changes in mortality attributable to fine particulate matter (PM&lt;sub&gt;2.5&lt;/sub&gt;) and ozone (O&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;) using three large ensembles of fully coupled CESM2-WACCM6 simulations from the ARISE-SAI-1.5, ARISE-SAI-1.0 and SSP2-4.5 scenarios. In the ARISE-SAI-1.5 scenario, maintaining temperatures at 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels through SAI results in a modest reduction in pollution-related mortality during 2060&amp;ndash;2069 relative to SSP2-4.5, driven by a 1.26 % decrease in ozone-related deaths and a 0.86 % increase in PM&lt;sub&gt;2.5&lt;/sub&gt;-related deaths. PM&lt;sub&gt;2.5&lt;/sub&gt; mortality changes exhibit almost no sensitivity to injected sulfate amounts, with the most variability driven by precipitation-mediated changes in non-sulfate PM&lt;sub&gt;2.5&lt;/sub&gt; species (e.g., dust and secondary organic aerosols), whereas ozone-related mortality are primarily driven by surface cooling and hemispheric asymmetries in stratospheric-tropospheric exchange and ozone transport. Overall, SAI impacts on pollution-related mortality are modest, regionally heterogeneous, and much smaller in magnitude compared to improvements expected from near-term air quality policies. Our finding that mortality impacts do not directly scale with SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; injection rates underscores the nonlinear and complex nature of atmospheric responses to SAI. Significant differences across ensemble members further emphasize the role of internal variability and the need for ensemble-based analysis when evaluating potential health implications of climate intervention strategies.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Quadrature Climate Foundation</funding-source>
<award-id>N/A</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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