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Pinpointing air pollution from space

For the first time, air pollution from individual cities and built-up areas can be detected from space. The new service, that pinpoints sources of pollution precisely and analyses global pollutant distributions, is based on measurements from the European Sentinel-5 Precursor Earth observation satellite.

The TROPOsphericMonitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the satellite provides daily global measurements of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and aerosol and cloud properties. With a spatial resolution of 3.5 kilometres by 7 kilometres, the TROPOMI multispectrometer outperforms comparable systems by a factor of 100. This means greater precision than ever before. The data gathered are freely available.

Read how CANARIE, DFN, GÉANT, Nordunet, SURF and Uninett are involved in the full story on the In The Field blog.

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