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Background: The public health community readily recognizes flooding and wildfires as climate-related health hazards, but few studies quantify changes in risk of exposure, particularly for vulnerable children and older adults. Objectives: This study quantifies future populations potentially exposed to inland flooding and wildfire smoke under two climate scenarios, highlighting the populations in particularly vulnerable age groups ([less than or equal to] 4 y old and [greater than or equal to] 65 y old). Methods: Spatially explicit projections of inland flooding and wildfire under two representative concentration pathways (RCP8.5 and RCP4.5) are integrated with static (2010) and dynamic (2050 and 2090) age-stratified projections of future contiguous U.S. populations at the county level. Results: In both 2050 and 2090, an additional one-third of the population will live in areas affected by larger and more frequent inland flooding under RCP8.5 than under RCP4.5. Approximately 15 million children and 25 million older adults could avoid this increased risk of flood exposure each year by 2090 under a moderate mitigation scenario (RCP4.5 compared with RCP8.5). We also find reduced exposure to wildfire smoke under the moderate mitigation scenario. Nearly 1 million young children and 1.7 million older adults would avoid exposure to wildfire smoke each year under RCP4.5 than under RCP8.5 by the end of the century. Conclusions: By integrating climate-driven hazard and population projections, newly created county-level exposure maps identify locations of potential significant future public health risk. These potential exposure results can help inform actions to prevent and prepare for associated future adverse health outcomes, particularly for vulnerable children and older adults. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP2594, Introduction Human health threats from climate change are occurring both in the United States (Melillo et al. 2014; USGCRP 2016) and globally (Costello et al. 2009; Patz et al. 2014; [...]

Reefs and People at Risk: Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere put shallow, warm-water coral reef ecosystems, and the people who depend upon them at risk from two key global environmental stresses: 1) elevated sea surface temperature (that can cause coral bleaching and related mortality), and 2) ocean acidification. These global stressors: cannot be avoided by local management, compound local stressors, and hasten the loss of ecosystem services. Impacts to people will be most grave where a) human dependence on coral reef ecosystems is high, b) sea surface temperature reaches critical levels soonest, and c) ocean acidification levels are most severe. Where these elements align, swift action will be needed to protect people’s lives and livelihoods, but such action must be informed by data and science. An Indicator Approach: Designing policies to offset potential harm to coral reef ecosystems and people requires a better understanding of where CO2-related global environmental stresses could cause the most severe impacts. Mapping indicators has been proposed as a way of combining natural and social science data to identify policy actions even when the needed science is relatively nascent. To identify where people are at risk and where more science is needed, we map indicators of biological, physical and social science factors to understand how human dependence on coral reef ecosystems will be affected by globally-driven threats to corals expected in a high-CO2 world. Western Mexico, Micronesia, Indonesia and parts of Australia have high human dependence and will likely face severe combined threats. As a region, Southeast Asia is particularly at risk. Many of the countries most dependent upon coral reef ecosystems are places for which we have the least robust data on ocean acidification. These areas require new data and interdisciplinary scientific research to help coral reef-dependent human communities better prepare for a high CO2 world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]