Originally published in our June 2022 newsletter (Issue 15)
Yasmin’s PCHES-sponsored work how urban populations adapt to increasing temperatures exposures, the associated energy demand consequences of such adaptation, and how such adaptation moderates heat-related health outcomes.
Yasmin Romitti is a PhD candidate working with Professor Ian Sue Wing in the Earth and Environment department at Boston University and a National Science Foundation Research Trainee in the BU graduate program in urban biogeoscience and environmental health (BU URBAN). Broadly, her research focuses on questions that lie at the intersection of climate impacts, energy, and health. Prior to her graduate studies, Yasmin worked as a research associate with both the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Boston University (2012) and a Master’s of Advanced International Studies from the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna in Austria (2014).
Cities will be home to 68% of the world’s population by 2050 and are on the front lines of climate adaptation. As extreme and high temperatures continue to increase, an empirical understanding how urban populations adapt to more intense and frequent heat exposure, what the associated energy demand consequences of such adaptation are, and to what extent these adaptation mechanisms moderate heat-related health outcomes has important implications for climate adaptation and resilience planning. Yasmin’s dissertation research delves into these questions using methods across the disciplines of economics, climate impacts, population health and epidemiology.
There is a critical need to understand the drivers of demand at the fine spatial and temporal scales at which urban residents make adaptation decisions. Recently, Yasmin and Ian Sue Wing used reduced form response surfaces in conjunction with temporally downscaled projections of mid-century temperatures from 21 CMIP5 global climate models to quantify the net electricity demand consequences of decreased cool season heating and increased warm season cooling across a diverse set of world cities representing diverse latitudinal gradients, levels of development, and infrastructure . Compared to the tropics, impacts in mid-latitude cities are larger in magnitude, highlighting the importance of the structure of electricity demand in addition to future shifts in the distribution of temperatures.
Other components of Yasmin’s dissertation work focus on using hierarchical models for fine spatial scale quantification of residential air conditioning (AC) prevalence across U.S. metropolitan areas, and how the distribution of AC differs across varying levels of population social and environmental vulnerability. She is also investigating the extent to which residential AC moderates heat-related health outcomes using a unique dataset of hospitalization and emergency department records from the state of California.
Highlighted Articles:
Romitti, Y. and I. Sue Wing (2022). Heterogeneous climate change impacts on electricity demand in world cities circa mid-century. Scientific reports, 12(1), 1-14.
Romitti Y, I. Sue Wing, K. Spangler, and Gregory A. Wellenius (2022). Inequality in the availability of residential air conditioning across 115 US metropolitan areas. In review.