PM25_shock_ssp5
This layer measures the projected change in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution between today and mid-century under a high-emissions, fossil-fuel-intensive fut…
Category: Scenario Coverage: Global Format: Raster grid (~100 km) Used in risk analysis: No (contextual layer; not used in materiality scoring)
What it shows
This layer measures the projected change in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution between today and mid-century under a high-emissions, fossil-fuel-intensive future. Instead of showing absolute pollution levels, it highlights where air quality is expected to deteriorate the most, so that future change rather than present conditions drives the air-pollution risk signal.
How it is built
The shock is derived from CMIP6 climate-model projections under SSP5-8.5, a high fossil-fuel development pathway. For each location it compares projected 2050 PM2.5 against a 2014 baseline and expresses the difference as a relative change. The signal is dampened in already very clean areas: where baseline concentrations fall below a health-relevant "very low" threshold, the change is attenuated so that ultra-clean regions such as the Arctic and open ocean do not register misleadingly large percentage shocks. The output is a coarse global grid (roughly 100 km cells).
How to read it
Higher positive values mean a larger projected worsening of fine-particulate pollution by 2050; values near zero indicate little expected change; negative values indicate projected improvement. As clean baseline regions are deliberately down-weighted, the strongest signals appear in already-populated or polluted areas. This pathway typically shows larger increases than the sustainable-development variant.
Source
CMIP6 climate models (WGCM CMIP6 ensemble), models GFDL-ESM4, GISS-E2-1-G and MIROC-ES2L, scenario SSP5-8.5; 2014 baseline versus 2050 projection.
Comparison with the WWF Risk Filter Suite
The WWF Risk Filter Suite publishes present-day risk indicators, not forward-looking scenario shocks. This layer is a temporal change-variant of an air-quality risk WWF assesses only for current conditions, so it has no distinct WWF equivalent and is a Darwin scenario extension.
Legend
Symbolised field: PM2.5 purity shock (%)
Generated from darwin/layers/layer-pm25-shock-ssp5.toml and risk_indicator_pairs.toml (develop).