Global air quality and pollution

Science, 1991

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2008

Journal of Geophysical Research, 2004

1] Measurements from the Terra satellite launched in December of 1999 provide a global record of the recent interannual variability of tropospheric air quality: carbon monoxide (CO) from the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument and aerosol optical depth (AOD) from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This paper compares and contrasts these data sets with a view to understanding the general features of the overall pollutant loading of the Northern Hemisphere (NH). We present a detailed examination of the seasonal and recent interannual variability of the fine mode AOD and CO column, first considering the variation of the global zonal average for both quantities, and then concentrating on several geographical regions with the aim of isolating different emissions. In a zonal sense, the principal NH sources are related to anthropogenic urban and industrial activity. We show that both the CO and the AOD zonal seasonal variations reflect the atmospheric oxidant concentration, which determines the primary sink of CO and the production of sulfate aerosol. As a consequence, the seasonal cycles are several months out of phase, with perturbations resulting from sporadic wildfire or biomass-burning emissions. In these cases, carbonaceous particles dominate the AOD, and this results in the best correlation with the CO column. Of the 4 years of data available from the Terra satellite, the winter and spring of 2002-2003 showed anomalously high NH pollution compared to the previous years. This was a result of fires in western Russia in the late summer and fall of 2002 and intense fires in the southeast of Russia in the spring and summer of 2003. We examine these events using fire counts from MODIS to indicate the burning regions and investigate how the timing of the fires in relation to atmospheric oxidant concentrations affects the resultant seasonal pollutant loadings. Finally, we trace the emissions from these fires to indicate how intense local pollution sources can impact continental-and global-scale air quality.

Journal of Geophysical Research, 2004

Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XXIII

The NASA/Smithsonian Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO; tempo.si.edu) satellite instrument will measure atmospheric pollution and much more over Greater North America at high temporal resolution (hourly or better in daylight, with selected observations at 10 minute or better sampling) and high spatial resolution (10 km 2 at the center of the field of regard). It will measure ozone (O 3) profiles (including boundary layer O 3), and columns of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2), nitrous acid (HNO 2), sulfur dioxide (SO 2), formaldehyde (H 2 CO), glyoxal (C 2 H 2 O 2), water vapor (H 2 O), bromine oxide (BrO), iodine oxide (IO), chlorine dioxide (OClO), as well as clouds and aerosols, foliage properties, and ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation. The instrument has been delivered and is awaiting spacecraft integration and launch in 2022. This talk describes a selection of TEMPO applications based on the TEMPO Green Paper living document (http://tempo.si.edu/publications.html). Applications to air quality and health will be summarized. Other applications presented include: biomass burning and O 3 production; aerosol products including synergy with GOES infrared measurements; lightning NO x ; soil NO x and fertilizer application; crop and forest damage from O 3 ; chlorophyll and primary productivity; foliage studies; halogens in coastal and lake regions; ship tracks and drilling platform plumes; water vapor studies including atmospheric rivers, hurricanes, and corn sweat; volcanic emissions; air pollution and economic evolution; high-resolution pollution versus traffic patterns; tidal effects on estuarine circulation and outflow plumes; air quality response to power blackouts and other exceptional events.

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-terrestrial Physics, 1992

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2003

Using coincident observations of total ozone from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and stratospheric ozone profiles from the Solar Backscattered Ultraviolet (SBUV) instruments, detailed maps of tropospheric ozone have been derived on a daily basis over a time period spanning more than two decades. The resultant climatological seasonal depictions of the tropospheric ozone residual (TOR) show much more detail than an earlier analysis that had used coincident TOMS and Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) ozone profiles, although there are many similarities between the TOMS/SAGE TOR and the TOMS/SBUV TOR climatologies. In particular, both TOR seasonal depictions show large enhancements in the southern tropics and subtropics in austral spring and at northern temperate latitudes during the summer. The much greater detail in this new data set clearly defines the regional aspect of tropospheric ozone pollution in northeastern India, eastern United States, eastern China, and west and southern Africa. Being able to define monthly climatologies for each year of the data record provides enough temporal resolution to illustrate significant interannual variability in some of these regions.

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2009

Comparisons of aircraft measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) to the retrievals of CO using observations from the Measurements of Pollution in The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument onboard the Terra satellite are presented. Observations made as part of the NASA INTEX-B and NSF MIRAGE field campaigns during March-May 2006 are used to validate the MOPITT CO retrievals, along with routine samples from 2001 through 2006 from NOAA and the MOZAIC measurements from commercial aircraft. A significant positive bias, around 20% for total column CO, in MOPITT CO was found in the comparison to in situ measurements during 2006. Comparisons to the longterm records of measurements from NOAA and MOZAIC revealed an increasing bias in the V3 MOPITT CO retrievals over time. The impact of an instrumental drift is illustrated through retrieval simulations.

2001

The massive forest fire in Indonesia in 1997 affected the whole Asian region by transporting large quantity of smoke plume with Malaysia bearing the brunt due to being nearer, wind direction and weather conditions.

Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 2009

Within the framework of air quality monitoring, measurements by Earth-observing satellite sensors are combined here with regional meteorological and chemical transport models. Two satellite-derived products developed within the QUITSAT project, regarding significant pollutants including PM 2.5 and NO 2 , are presented. Estimates of PM 2.5 concentrations at ground level were obtained using moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (Terra-Aqua/NASA) aerosol optical properties. The semi-empirical approach adopted takes into account PM 2.5 sampling and meteorological descriptions of the area studied, as simulated by MM5, to infer aerosol optical properties to PM projection coefficients. Daily maps of satellite-based PM 2.5 concentrations over northern Italy are derived. Monthly average values were compared with in situ PM 2.5 samplings showing good agreement. Ozone monitoring instrument (OMI) (Aura/NASA) NO 2 tropospheric contents are merged using the GAMES chemical model simulations. The method employs a weighted rescaling of the model column in the troposphere according to the OMI observations. The weightings take into account measurement errors and model column variances within the satellite ground pixel. The obtained ground-level concentrations of NO 2 show good agreement with the environmental agencies' in situ.