New research led by UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health students and faculty has mapped global ground-level ozone concentrations by year using a data fusion. This is the first time this method has been applied to ozone observations globally. The findings were used by the Global Burden of Disease 2019 (GBD2019) study, which estimated that about 365,000 people around the world died in 2019 from exposure to ozone pollution.
Ground-level ozone air pollution is damaging to plant growth and to human health, causing people to die prematurely from respiratory diseases.
The research, published online March 8 by the journal Environmental Science & Technology, used the largest compilation of ozone observations ever produced and estimates from nine global atmospheric models. By doing a data fusion, the research team was able to combine these different sources of information and make use of the advantages of each.
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