Imagine a world without rainfall. We call it droughts. Or imagine a situation of torrential rainfall and flooding, like in Pakistan last year.
And imagine a world where all our groundwater reserves have dried up. This is not too hypothetical a scenario — the world’s groundwater reserves are already declining. Groundwater is no different from fossil fuels – it is going to deplete one day if we continue to extract without allowing it to recharge.
A drought does not kill in hundreds – when it happens, it kills millions. China, India, Bangladesh, Africa, and even Russia and USA have faced such droughts in their history. And flooding has similar consequences – it causes extensive loss of lives and properties.
So what can we do to prepare ourselves for such adverse scenarios or natural calamities? How can we make sure that we have enough freshwater resources to meet the demand of an ever-increasing population which is already 7 billion?
Cloud seeding is one potential solution. Cloud seeding can be used both to suppress or enhance rainfall. If used appropriately, the application of cloud seeding technology has many possibilities — from enhancing rainfall, snow packs, and groundwater reserves — to suppressing hails, the great enemy of farmers, which can destroy large crop fields in minutes. Cloud seeding is relatively a mature technology used since the 1950s when scientists first discovered the seeding ability of dry ice and silver iodide. It was extensively applied in the late 20th century but it slowly lost momentum afterward for various reasons. Its exploration is again gaining attention as we face prolonged droughts, heatwaves, flooding, and fires worldwide.
This week, scientists and policymakers from around the world working in the field of cloud seeding and rain enhancement are meeting in Abu Dhabi to discuss these and other related issues aiming to find water solutions for the future.
On the first day of #IREF organized by The UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP), we saw several interesting new approaches in cloud seeding works, from the use of electrical charge to acoustic methods for rain enhancement. Today was another engaging day discussing the process-level understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and the adoption of cloud seeding technology by countries such as Ethiopia and Thailand for tackling their water problems. For anyone interested in understanding rain enhancement technologies, below is the link to today’s program.
A scientific research article finds its way from “submitted” to “published” status through the combined efforts of authors, reviewers, journal staff, and editors. The role of journal editors and staff may be more indirect, but the authors and the reviewers are directly involved in the exchange of ideas during the review process. Review is essentially a two-way communication between the authors and the reviewers. Paying attention to some subtle details of the review process can make such communication more effective. In this piece, I discuss the role of the reviewers—how can a reviewer provide an effective review?
Most of the researchers have a dual role to play. They are authors and reviewers too. Almost all researchers contribute as a reviewer at some point during their careers. Although reviewers usually provide their service free of cost, they get several intangible benefits in return, from career growth and recognition to critical thinking. There is no doubt that reviewing is one of the most responsible jobs in academia. Even the best of the best research must go through a reviewer’s eye before it is published. Without the input from reviewers, we would not be able to know about those breakthrough discoveries in science and technology, from DNA structure to the big bang theory. A reviewer’s input also helps to make the paper more readable and understandable to a broader audience. Although the external review process is fairly established, which dates back to the 18th century, there are several subtle details paying attention to which make the process more efficient.
In order to provide a fair and effective review, the reviewer must be able to view the manuscript from a broader perspective while also paying attention to the minute details. Asking the following questions in order can be helpful in this regard,
Does the manuscript have some elements of curiosity, wonder, and an innate human quest for knowledge?
Are the authors aware of the impact of their research on human beings and other life forms on Earth?
Are the claims presented in the manuscript consistent with basic scientific principles?
Are the ideas presented in the paper consistent and structured around the main point?
Are there any errors or wrongdoings in the manuscript, willful or unintentional?
A reviewer should keep the above questions in mind during the entire review process. As a reviewer, we must aim to provide our best input so that the paper is meaningfully improved. While a review is helpful in meeting our career goal, as researchers, it is also our professional and social obligation to push science forward. Only if we embrace reviewing as part of social responsibility, we will be able to contribute meaningfully and become proud of our service. The following tips can be useful in making your review more effective.
Be supportive
Be responsive
Be realistic
Have a broader mindset
Focus on content and science
Recognize and promote creativity
See the bigger picture
Be supportive: Many reviewers regard the review forum as a place for providing criticisms to the authors. This narrative must change. A publishing platform is a place where you provide support to your fellow authors. We must support each other in our respective research fields so that we all can grow together. Learning is a collective process with a common interest. We are likely to discover new things if we seek each other’s help. If our research field grows or if one of us discovers something new, we all get benefits. Remember, you have become a reviewer today because you have published your work with the help of other reviewers. You will easily see the positive impact of the review process if you compare the first version of your manuscript with the final published version. So before finalizing a review, please make sure that you have provided some supportive comments or suggestions in the review. Before hitting the “submit” button, make sure to ask yourself, in what specific ways you are helping the authors. Is your review likely to be appreciated by the authors or not?
Be responsive. Reviewers are usually given 2-4 weeks by the editors to provide their review. Unfortunately, most of the reviewers submit their reviews in the last hours, when they receive the final reminder email. On top of this, reviewers are usually given 3-7 days for initial acceptance to review a manuscript. Even during this stage, many reviewers give their decision on the last day. Although meeting the review deadlines is technically correct, it may not be a sign of a responsible reviewer. In most circumstances, except for genuine reasons like humanitarian and travel reasons, we can provide our initial response within a day. There is nothing much to think about at this stage. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to read the abstract and respond. If that is not the case, stick to this advice—do not commit to reviewing if you do not have enough time. For the detailed review report, if we manage our time properly, it should not take more than a week because it takes only about 3-4 hours for reviewing a paper. If it takes more than 3-4 hours to review the paper, you should probably not review the paper. Personally, I try to submit my reviews within 3 days. There is no reason to wait for the editor’s deadline. Once the paper is in our hands, we have to set our own deadline. All authors want to pass through the review process as soon as possible. Remember how desperate you were to see the reviews when you submitted your first paper. Therefore, it also becomes our moral obligation to provide the review as soon as possible.
Be realistic: A paper cannot include all the literature reviews we might want to see. Neither can it answer all questions that we might want to know. With the authority we get as a reviewer, our expectations may reach unrealistically high at times. We must be realistic about what we expect in the review from the authors. It is unfair to ask the authors to repeat the entire experiment for answering a minor question. The authors are obliged to clarify the content of their manuscript but they need not answer all our personal queries. It is reasonable to ask for clarification if you genuinely do not understand something but the question must be relevant to the paper. Similarly, we cannot ask the authors to redo the entire simulation, just to prove a simple thing. Redoing simulation is also a waste of resources because extra computation involves extra energy; supercomputers have significant energy requirements for cooling. Therefore, it will be helpful to identify what are the major and minor comments in the review. After all, however good or extensive our review be, the authors have the final right to accept or reject them. The authors may not be able to satisfy all of our queries. That is totally fine. It is their work so it has to be their decision. It is very important to trust the authors in their work because we all are part of the same research community.
Another important point. You might be an expert in your field, but realize that the authors probably know more than you do about their work. All authors spend a significant amount of time, from months to years, investing in their research questions. So obviously, they know more about their work. In my own experience, however good the quality of a paper is, many reviewers fail to recognize it. As reviewers, many people feel obliged to provide some comments, which is unnecessary. If a paper is well written, it is perfectly fine to say that I do not have any comments. Most experienced authors submit their articles only after going through a rigorous internal review and proofreading. In such a case, it is important to acknowledge it.
Have a broad mindset: Many reviewers throw what is on their heads even if it is not relevant to the paper that they are reviewing. If we only look at the paper through our own lens, we are not likely to provide a fair review. For experienced reviewers, who have spent years to decades conducting research in their field, it might be tempting to think that we know everything about our research domain. However, it is important to recognize that the research field is a dynamic landscape and it keeps changing every day whether we are aware of it or not. Several interdisciplinary research topics keep emerging as we try to understand the wholeness of research. For example, some of the earliest climate models only had atmospheric components because at that time we thought that the atmospheric interactions with land or ocean were not significant. However, now we know that such interactions do occur through multiple pathways, among all components of the earth system, land, atmosphere, ocean, biosphere, and cryosphere. There is still a lot more to know in this regard, from human-animal-climate interactions to deep-ocean processes. We must be willing to expand our research boundaries to allow knowledge to permeate through different interdisciplinary areas. Therefore, it is important to keep our minds open so that critical cross-boundary interactions take place and science advances forward.
Focus on content and science. The primary objective of the research is to contribute to pushing science forward. All other aspects including communication are secondary. In many instances, reviewers focus on the English language too much. Some go so far that they end up providing comments related to English and language structure only. As highlighted in a Communications Earth & Environment editorial [2], we should focus more on science than language. We must understand that language is just a means of communication. As long as the intended message is clear, it cannot be a barrier to publication. Creative ideas do not depend upon a language. Groundbreaking scientific discoveries can come from anyone and any geography. For our own benefit, we must welcome researchers from across the world whose native language may not be English. We are now in a world where inclusiveness, diversity, and multiculturalism are highly sought after and valued. Therefore, our primary focus must be on content or science, not anything else. Further, we should evaluate the manuscript freely without any judgments regardless of whether the authors are early-career researchers or experts in the field. We must give everyone an equal opportunity. In fact, new researchers are the ones who bring innovative ideas to the table. These days, many journal articles are full of repeated materials. In a world, where, millions of research articles are published every day [3], many of which are repetitions, we must be willing to appreciate new ideas. We have to focus more on the idea and results, not on the bureaucracy of the process.
Recognize and promote simplicity: One of the key attributes of creativity is simplicity. Therefore, we have to recognize the simplicity of research. There is one thing to be aware on this regard—we are generally impressed when the results are presented in a complex manner. We think that the paper is more legitimate if we see complex figures and have complex discussions around a certain point. These days, publishing has become a painstaking process. Many researchers now believe that high-quality research must have complex figures and advanced 3-d models to prove their points. We are unconsciously promoting such practices in the name of high-quality research. We must not think that complexity is the characteristic of science. In fact, it is the opposite. Most groundbreaking ideas are indeed simple. Simple statistical measures like correlation, standard deviation, and root mean square error can tell more than what advanced statistical analysis can do in many instances. We must choose clarity and simplicity over confusion and complexity. Doing research and publishing the results should be a joyful process. Sharing knowledge should be the most satisfying human experience; it need not be a painful process. If we choose complexity over simplicity, we are only winding up ourselves. According to research conducted in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications published by nature in 2021 [4], more than 40% of PhD students in the UK met the criteria for moderate to severe depression or anxiety, which was much higher than for other working professionals. There is no doubt that one of the main causes of this problem is the hardship faced by the researchers while going through the painstaking publication process.
See the bigger picture. Amidst growing academic pressure, a competitive research environment, and peer competition, many researchers forget the larger purpose of their research. We must remember that we are obliged to serve society because, in one way or the other, taxpayers fund our research. It is our obligation to align our research for the benefit of our society. Rather than pushing a particular line of thought, we have to push ideas that are beneficial to humanity. If science does not benefit society, there is no meaning in investing in it. And we have to make every effort to make our research accessible to the public. For this reason, the authors should communicate their research in as simple terms as possible. They should write their paper keeping in mind the larger audience or the general people, not the experts in their field. As reviewers, it is our responsibility to check if authors are mindful of the bigger picture of their research.
[4] Hazell, C.M., Niven, J.E., Chapman, L. et al. Nationwide assessment of the mental health of UK Doctoral Researchers. Humanit Soc Sci Commun8, 305 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00983-8.
I have recently accepted an offer to join the Editorial Board of the Journal Communications Earth & Environment as a member starting this July. Communications Earth and Environment is an emerging open-access journal from the esteemed Nature Porfolio. I am very happy to join this particular journal because I value life and I care about the wellbeing of our planet Earth.
I hope to contribute meaningfully in uplifting the quality of this journal while also encouraging authentic research works that address the widespread problem of air pollution and degrading Earth’s environment. There is no doubt that, whatever be our research objectives, we must support the wellbeing of our Planet Earth and its biodiversity.
Please consider submitting your article in this open-access journal from Nature Portfolio to increase the impact of your work.
Long live our Earth and environment!
Did you know?
Nature partially pays to their editorial board members.
When I was a kid, I never dreamed of earning a PhD. All I wanted was to study more and more. So I just followed the course of the river. I didn’t know or care whether the destination is ocean or something else.
When I became an adult, I knew that the society where I was brought up highly revered a PhD. So I had thought that I will also some day do a PhD.
We can plan something but not everything. That is what I have experienced. PhD thought came into my mind when my supervisor at Masdar Institute came to my desk one day. He showed a small ad in an AGU newsletter about a PhD position at UT Austin. I didn’t want to let down my supervisor so I applied. In fact, that was the only place where I applied. Until then, I had only thought of returning back to Nepal and rejoining my low-paid but highly revered ‘engineer’ position. I was not sure about it even after I got the offer. I really didn’t know that UT-Austin was a good ranking Tier 1 university until I posted about this offer in my Facebook page. The comments reflected that UT Austin is a great place. My perceptions got changed. I decided to pursue.
I was about to give up soon after I started my research at UT Austin. I was hit really hard in one of the group meeting. Not only by my supervisor but also by my colleagues. I felt the lowest of my life on that day. But soon I realized that it was because the standard and quality of research was much higher than I expected.
I was very busy taking 3 courses at that time and it was very hard to manage time for research. A few colleagues had already failed in their qualifying exams. So I many times felt that it was a wrong decision to pursue a PhD. My health was also not favoring me; I had been diagnosed with celiac disease (allergic to gluten). I very much regretted for leaving my government job of an Engineer back in Nepal.
So there were only two options. Do or die. It is the same thing but a different tone is used in research: publish or perish. But as I interacted more and more with my colleagues and knew about research, I realized that we all were on the same boat. So I decided to continue. I worked harder. Time was not a problem for me because I was married single at that time. Weekends and holidays then meant more research. No wonder, my eye power kept on increasing at a rate of 0.25 per year.
Things started getting better. Qualifying exam was a great success.
I was still not comfortable in the world of research. I tried to avoid people who criticized my work. But later I realized that I can’t escape anywhere in research. You can’t escape your peers. You can’t escape your experts in your field. Most importantly you can’t escape the reviewers of you papers. It took little longer for me to realize that such interactions, feedback, comments, etc. are actually good things.
I never thought that I would be able to graduate in three and half years. But it happened. I worked hard and it got reflected. One of the reason for this success is also that I didn’t waste any of my work at UT Austin, not even the class projects. I always kept the main research topic in my mind before I started any class projects. So all of those activities later became part of my dissertation.
My daughter was born in the last year of my PhD. And the degree of ‘father’ means no less than PhD to me. Indeed, graduate study is when many people get engaged, married, or have their first kids.
With my adviser(to my right), co-adviser(to my left), and examination committee members after the defense on April 15, 2016.
The most important thing that I realized during my PhD study is that learning is a never-ending process. Initially, I really thought that research is or has to be flawless. But I was totally wrong on that. There can be many flaws in your research. That is exactly why we discuss the limitation in the end of a research paper. PhD makes us understand this reality in depth.
I also realized that we can’t be successful in PhD just by gaining knowledge. We have to develop some conscience too. Knowledge without conscience is indeed dangerous.
When I was a child, I believed that if something is written in a text book, it must be true. I believed everything I read in a book. But now, I trust nothing other than my conscience. I now not only buy the conclusions of a research but the wholeness of it, with its limitations and assumptions. After all, a theory is only true until the assumptions are true.
In our research, we try to model the earth system. Modeling the earth system is indeed overwhelmingly complex. Even a grain of sand is very much complex to model, let alone the whole Earth. We must simplify many physical processes. We have to make many assumptions. So sometimes it can be frustrating too. But the beauty of research is that we understand little more everyday than yesterday. The beauty of research is in seeking, not in gaining something.
With my wife Sirjana and daughter Nova on graduation day, May 21, 2016.
As I look at my Tam hanging on the wall, my heart leaps up with pride realizing that I received the highest degree possible in an academic world. But as I look out of the window and see the wonders of the nature, my heart bows down realizing that there is so much more to explore. I am still not sure how much knowledge I gained during my PhD but I know with certainty that I know very little.
Finally, what does this degree really mean? This degree reflects the knowledge of many people, knowledge that is passed down through generations. I am merely a carrier of this knowledge. It also reflects the aspirations of many people; my family, my teachers, my friends, and many anonymous others. It is an outcome of their good wishes.
Satellite data have greatly contributed in improving our understanding of Earth’s climate. We have several climate models but, without satellite data, we don’t know how they are performing. Without the satellite data, we don’t know how far is our imagination from reality. Satellite data provide us the realistic boundary conditions. Without the boundaries, our theory may easily turn into a fiction.
Several satellites fly above us everyday. They are watching us. They are recording our behavior. They are indeed CCTV in large scale. They are recording human activities. We have done many things unconsciously in the past. We have emitted environmental pollutants. We have polluted ocean and water bodies. We have cut down trees. But now it is all documented. If you emit pollution or exploit natural resource, you may have to appear in the court one day.
A lot of data has been generated by various satellites. There is a lot of data. Tremendous amount of data. But, unfortunately, only a fraction of this data has been really used, for some useful purpose.
Take an example of surface reflectance data which are available from MODIS and other satellites. Reflectance basically measures how the surface properties change over time. In fact, Earth’s surface records a lot of things, much more things than what you think right now. When it rains, it gets recorded. When the surface gets dried, it is recorded. When it is very cold, it is recorded. When it is very hot, it is recorded. When a hurricane happens, it is of course recorded. When there is flooding, it is indeed recorded. When an asteroid falls, why would it not record it? Deforestation is surely recorded. Even information about day, night, and Earth’s rotation all are recorded. What is not recorded? Everything. Just everything. In a single reflectance data, you will find everything you need. You just need to change your perspective. You will see a lot of information hiding in the data set.
It is only because of our poor creativity that we are sending satellites one after another. Otherwise, we can extract myriad of useful information that we need just from a single data set. We just need some skill to decode that information. We just need a creatively advanced algorithm to extract the required signal from the data. We will benefit more from our satellite data if we spend more time developing algorithms that can extract the various useful signals in a data set.
The possibilities of using satellite data are endless. We just need to be creative. Do not search in Google Scholar for what others have already done with the data. If you do so, you will only reproduce what others have already done. Ask yourself. How can you use the data to manifest your inner passion? Think differently. Creativity will emerge, from within you.
Who said that vegetation data can’t be used to study the fires? We just need to understand the connection. Creativity is within us. To be creative, we have to believe in our own capacity first. The only difference between we and Einstein is that Einstein believed in himself but we didn’t. The exact same intelligence resides within each of us. It is only a question of how much we allow it to come out. To the one who believes in himself/herself, possibilities are endless.
In an earlier post, I talked about how to download MODIS data in NetCDF format. Now I will tell you how to process the downloaded data in MATLAB.
Note that there can be be data outages on certain days so you might see less data than expected. For example, MODIS Aqua data for the year 2008 will have only 364 days of data although 366 (2008 is a leap year) is expected. Check the day stamp in the file name to know exactly which day is missing. I will be processing the 2008 data below. Further, I have noticed that on certain days (2-3 days in a year), the filenames are extra long with some added information during data processing in Giovanni. If you see such unusual names, you have to manually rename the files to make the names consistent with other files.
Read data
Copy all the files in your MATLAB workspace.
Since there are so many daily files, we need to read all the files using a loop. So follow the following steps:
file_names = dir ('*.nc'); % extract filenames and associated information
num_files = length(file_names); %num_files in this case is 364
deep_aod = zeros (360, 180, num_files); % 180 and 360 are latitude and longitude grids in each MODIS data
for m = 1:num_files;
deep_aod (:, :, m) = ncread(file_names(m).name, 'Deep_Blue_Aerosol_Optical_Depth_550_Land_Mean');
end;
The above code will create a 3-d workspace variable named deep_aod (360*180*364) in which 360, 180, and 364 represents longitude, latitude, and days of year 2008, respectively.
Calculate average for plotting
% change the dimensions of latitude and longitude to make it more intuitive (we want to see latitude in the rows and longitudes in the columns)
deep_aod_arng = permute(deep_aod, [2 1 3]);
%bring the time dimension to the front for easier processing
deep_aod_arng_time = permute(deep_aod_arng, [3 1 2]);
% convert the 3-d data to 2-d data so that we can apply vector operations in MATLAB, the resulting rows represent each day and columns represent each grid points in the entire globe.
deep_aod_arng_points = reshape(deep_aod_arng_time, [364 64800]);
Upon examining the data files we see that the days 107 and 309 days are missing. So lets insert two arrays in the respective place so that the date represents complete year and it is easier for further processing.
%create a dummy row of NaN to be inserted
dummy = NaN (1, 64800);
%insert the dummy row at the respective rows
deep_aod_arng_points_complete = [deep_aod_arng_points (1:106, :);dummy;deep_aod_arng_points (107:308, :);dummy;deep_aod_arng_points (309:end, :)];
Now create a timetable using this data; it will make it very easy for further calculations, for example, for calculating monthly mean.
%first create a datetime array for 2008
t1 = datetime (2008, 01, 01);
t2 = datetime (2008, 12, 31);
t = (t1:days:t2)';
% now create the timetable
deep_aod_2008_timetable = timetable(t, deep_aod_arng_points_complete);
%now lets calculate the monthly mean AOD values using this timetable
aod_monmean_2008 = retime (deep_aod_2008_timetable, 'monthly', 'mean'); %
Plot the data
% To plot the data, we need to read the latitude and longitude data from any one MODIS file:
MYD_lat = ncread('MYD08_D3.A2008001.061.2018031095350.hdf.nc', 'YDim');
MYD_lon = ncread('MYD08_D3.A2008001.061.2018031095350.hdf.nc', 'XDim');
% create a 2-d grid of latitude and longitude to be used for plotting
lat_mat = repmat(MYD_lat, 1, 360);
lon_mat = repmat(MYD_lon', 180, 1);
Now plot data with the below script using geoshow.
h1 = figure('position', [50 50 1200 600]);
axesm mercator
p = worldmap([-90 90],[-180 180]);
%borders('countries', 'Color', 'black', 'linewidth', 0.75)
gridm('on');
setm (p, 'mlabellocation', 40); % for reference_longitude
setm (p, 'plabellocation', 20); % for reference_latitude
geoshow('landareas.shp', 'linewidth', 1.2, 'facecolor', 'none')
h2 = geoshow (lat_mat, lon_mat, reshape(aod_monmean_2008.deep_aod_arng_points_complete(1, :), [180 360]), 'displaytype', 'surface');
caxis([0, 1]);
title('MODIS AOD Jan 2008');
colormap jet; brighten(0.5);
h3 = colorbar;
set(h3,'fontsize', 12);
You should get a plot like below:
Note: always verify the accuracy of the plotted data from your intuition or secondary sources. For example, in this case, I know that bodele in central Africa is one of the most active dust source region so it should have high AOD which I can see in this plot.
MODIS data can be downloaded from EarthData portal easily. Remember you have to register and login to download the data. Unfortunately, the data there are available in HDF format like in most other portals. But there is one portal from where you can download processed MODIS data in NetCDF format which can be easily handled in MATLAB and other programs. The name of that portal is Giovanni. Let me explain how you can download MODIS data in NetCDF format from this website:
Example of data visualization from Giovanni.
MODIS data are available in daily/monthly formats from both Terra (MOD*) and Aqua (MYD*) platforms. I will be downloading MODIS Aqua daily (MYD08_D3) data here. Go to the Giovanni website and enter the term MYD08_D3 in the search area. Be sure to login first; the same credentials from EarthData can be used. Enter the required date range. You can download data for the entire globe since data files are not that big. Let the plot be ‘Time Average Map’. After the search, select the desired variable, here I use “Aerosol Optical Depth 550 nm (Deep Blue, Land-only) (MYD08_D3 v6.1)”. Then click ‘plot data’.
In the upper left corner, click ‘lineage’, and go to the heading ‘Data File Staging’. Then click “Download list of all URLs in step” which will download the link of all input files (*.nc) in a text file. If you examine the data links inside the text file, you will see that the input files are in NetCDF format, not in HDF format.
Rename the text file to modis_data_list.txt and copy this file to your unix/linux workspace. Change the permission of this file by: chmod 777 modis_data_list.txt.
Now download the data listed in the modis_data_list.txt by using the command wget: wget –content-disposition -i modis_data_list.txt
The above step will download all the data requested in NetCDF format.
In the next post, I will explain how to process and visualize the downloaded data in MATLAB.
The air we breathe today is no longer the same when we were child. The rapidly increasing industrialization and urbanization has made it increasingly difficult to find fresh air in the cities we live. Even the remote villages are affected because the pollutants are transported downwind within a matter of hours when the meteorology is favorable.
Air pollution is one of the main thing to worry about at the moment globally. Air pollution is what is really killing people. Millions of people are dying every year from respiratory diseases related to air pollution. A research paper published in 2020 in Cardiovascular Research journal estimates about 8.8 million people die prematurely every year around the globe due to outdoor and indoor air pollution. Even in the current context of COVID-19 pandemic, It is a well known fact that more people are dying by COVID-19 because of preexisting conditions related to lung health.
Air quality is a common agenda of all lives including us the human beings. Who would not agree on a policy to reduce air pollution? Who would disagree if we say that we need to curb pollutant emissions to improve the quality of air that we and our children will breathe? We all are affected by air pollution without exceptions. It is our common problem that we must solve together. And fortunately, if we take care of air pollution, we will also solve most of the problems related to global warming and climate change.
So why not focus our attention in solving the problems of air quality? It is indeed the most sensible thing to do. Isn’t it so?
With my wife Sirjana and daughter Nova on graduation day, May 21, 2016.
