Posts in the 'Air Quality' category
Over the past few years, around the time when Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights and India’s biggest holiday – ends and winter sets in, Delhi’s air quality has plummeted to dangerous levels, initiating a series of debates and ...
High up in the stratosphere, naturally occurring ozone reflects solar radiation back into space, protecting people and the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays. But closer to Earth’s surface, rising ozone levels – formed when pollutants from a wide range of sources react ...
UPDATE, 9/7/2020: Vote now! Help us decide which questions should be prioritized to advance the study of air quality by voting on the 10 finalist questions from The GovLab and WRI now. We know that air pollution is a big problem – ...
Summertime often means soaring, dangerous temperatures. Recent heat waves in Europe brought government warnings, power plant shutdowns, restrictions on automobile use, heat stroke and deaths. But misery in Europe and elsewhere is compounded by the chemistry of how emissions from ...
Most of the rising global attention to air pollution focuses on the impacts that ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants have on human health. This is natural; the numbers in the headlines are striking. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that ...
Did you know that air quality is a major contributor to global warming? Or that poor air quality can reduce sunlight, disrupting rainfall patterns, depressing crop yields and diminishing solar energy output? Did you know air pollution is the biggest ...
The original version of this text appeared in the International Finance Corporation analysis, “Climate Investment Opportunities in Cities.” Air pollution is the world’s fourth-leading fatal health risk and the top environmental health risk. One in nine deaths globally are attributed ...
Several wildfires are still burning through California. The Camp Fire in Northern California has killed at least 48 people and is now the deadliest ever recorded. The fire has burned 130,000 acres near Paradise, 80 miles north of Sacramento. Near Thousand Oaks, Woolsey Fire ...
Solving the world’s air pollution problems is not going to be easy. Ninety-eight percent of cities in low- and middle-income countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants do not meet World Health Organization air quality guidelines for PM2.5. In total, 95 ...
Fireworks, block parties and barbeques: Those are the first things that come to mind when the 4th of July rolls around. But what’s least talked about is the quality of breathable air on the nation’s birthday. Data shows that levels of fine ...
In 2010, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing began reporting data on local air quality from a monitoring station on its roof. Once the dismal numbers were shared on Twitter, a storm of public outcry was unleashed that would culminate in ...
“India has 13 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world,” says Ritwick Dutta, the managing trustee for the Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), and Indian advocacy and law group. And yet, for the “bulk” of places ...
WRI recently announced a partnership with OpenAQ and Development Seed to help more users access – and contribute to – air quality data from around the world through the OpenAQ open source platform. This update, which originally appeared on OpenAQ’s ...
Can nature help cities address the twin problems of air that is too dirty or too hot? Based on a new report released by The Nature Conservancy – in collaboration with C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group – the answer appears ...
With 26 million inhabitants, Delhi’s metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the world. But the city also has terrible air quality, with an annual average particulate matter 15 times the recommendation of the World Health Organization. Air pollution is ...