By Helen Norman

In the wake of increasingly threatening air quality from extreme weather events such as the LA wildfires, Our Common Air is striving to mobilize attention, financing and political backing to protect global health, economies and climate. To find out more, Meteorological Technology International sits down with Christa Hasenkopf, commissioner of Our Common Air and director of the Clean Air Program at the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the co-founder and former CEO of OpenAQ – an open-source platform of air quality data.

Tell us more about Our Common Air and why it was established.

Air pollution in the form of fine particulate matter (e.g. smoke and dust) is the world’s largest contributor to human disease and death. This health toll translates into a huge economic cost to the planet; the World Bank estimates that 6.1% of global GDP, equivalent to US$8.1tn a year, is lost due to health damages by air pollution.

Given air pollution’s outsized health and economic impacts, there is surprisingly little strategic organizing on the issue at the global level. The Clean Air Fund estimates that less than 1% of international development funding has been committed to targeting air pollution over the last six years.

(The previous two statistics on the economic impact and the funding can be found here.) 

Our Common Air is an independent global commission of high-level government figures, health experts, academics and climate change specialists who are working to catalyze and accelerate global collective action on air pollution.

Where are some of the biggest gaps in global air quality data?

While we have a pretty good broad sense of global air quality using satellite information to estimate air quality, it is not a replacement for on-the-ground monitoring.

For one, estimates of air quality derived from satellites also rely on ground measurements, which are still considered the gold standard for monitoring air. So, if there are no ground measurements in a region, that can affect the accuracy of those estimates.

Even more importantly, national and local policies on air pollution are not usually set by satellite-derived data. Instead, they are set by continuous ground monitor readings that can provide a lot more granular temporal and spatial picture of air quality.

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