{"id":626828,"date":"2023-04-07T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T14:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/07\/nasa-is-getting-really-serious-about-tracking-air-pollution\/"},"modified":"2023-04-07T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T14:01:00","slug":"nasa-is-getting-really-serious-about-tracking-air-pollution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/07\/nasa-is-getting-really-serious-about-tracking-air-pollution\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Is Getting Really Serious About Tracking Air Pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When meteorologist John<\/span> Haynes moved to Washington, DC, 20 years ago, he could stand on the rooftop of NASA headquarters and see airborne traces of the nearby\u00a0interstate highway\u2014there was\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0much pollution. \u201cThere was a cloud of smog that just followed the freeway,\u201d he says, \u201call the way out into Virginia.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A decade later, NASA started planting the seeds of a global effort to monitor urban air quality and its effects on health. Those seeds are now beginning to sprout:\u00a0Just after midnight,<\/a> the agency launched its first instrument capable of hovering over North America to spy on urban pollution. This summer, the team will enhance that data with measurements taken by aircraft. NASA also just announced its first satellite mission that will be done in partnership with health experts to reveal the relationship between specific health conditions and the toxic airborne particles lingering above some of the world\u2019s largest cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Overall, they want to create a granular portrait of what exactly is in the sky, and how it got there\u2014one that can\u2019t be detailed with ground-based pollution monitors alone.\u00a0Seventy-nine percent of US counties<\/a> lack an Environmental Protection Agency monitor on the ground, so the EPA\u2019s information isn\u2019t representative of the air most Americans are breathing. Data from other parts of the world is\u00a0even\u00a0more<\/em> sparse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is not NASA\u2019s first foray into environmental surveillance. The agency has been measuring the ozone layer\u2014the topmost part of the atmosphere\u2014for decades, and\u00a0monitoring closer to the Earth since the 1990s by flying small aircraft over the ocean, rainforests, and parts of Asia and Africa. \u201cThat was sort of what we call the exploratory days,\u201d says Earth scientist Barry Lefer, manager of NASA\u2019s Tropospheric Composition Program, which focuses on the chemical makeup of pollutants inhabiting the atmosphere underneath the ozone layer. \u201cBut,\u201d he continues, \u201cthe transition to urban air quality is relatively new.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it: There are challenges to monitoring emissions over anything as small as a city\u2014much less a neighborhood\u2014from a space as gigantic as the sky. The agency\u2019s first satellite dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, launched in 2014 and is still active. Its successor, OCO-3, is now mounted on the International Space Station. The two have produced detailed area maps of carbon emissions\u00a0over the Los Angeles basin<\/a> and\u00a0from Europe\u2019s largest power plant<\/a>. But while OCO-3 passes over nearly every city on Earth, its information is still limited because it lacks continuous monitoring of any location over long periods.<\/p>\n

Enter Tempo, short for Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution,\u00a0the NASA air quality mission that launched early this morning. Unlike previous Earth-observing satellites, it will be the first instrument locked in a geostationary orbit\u2014meaning it\u2019ll rotate at the same speed and direction as the planet so it can loiter over a single part of the globe. For the first time, NASA will be able to make hourly daytime observations of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, formaldehyde, and more across North America, including the continental United States, the Caribbean islands, and most of Canada and Mexico. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get from sunrise to sunset,\u201d Lefer says, with data taken frequently enough to see spikes during rush hour traffic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tempo will also be able to track variations in pollution at the neighborhood scale. Lefer foresees this being especially useful for exposing environmental injustice, since lower-income and\u00a0racially segregated areas<\/a> are more likely to be near emissions sources, like ports and refineries. \u201cAnd satellite data can show that,\u201d he says. Weather forecasting will benefit, too: With information constantly collected across greater North America, agencies will be able to more accurately infer future conditions, particularly in places where data currently exists for only a certain time of day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this\u00a0mission has its limits: Satellites only look down, just as remote-sensing ground monitors only look up. A lot gets missed that way, like details about which pollutants are at different altitudes, says chemist Gregory Frost of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That\u2019s why this summer NASA will partner with NOAA, the National Science Foundation, and\u00a0several other institutions<\/a> to fill in the gaps between space and the ground. Instruments\u00a0aboard\u00a0NASA\u2019s DC-8<\/a>,\u00a0Gulfstream III and V<\/a>, and other jets will characterize trace gases and aerosols above urban areas like New York City, Los Angeles, and DC, as well as coastal regions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These readings will calibrate Tempo\u2019s space data and add to it in areas that lack good satellite or ground coverage. Combine all of this data with information from EPA monitors and weather models, and scientists will soon be able to analyze the atmosphere from multiple points of view. \u201cOnce we do that,\u201d Frost says, \u201cit\u2019s going to be like having an air pollution monitor everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists are particularly interested in chasing pollutants called PM 2.5, or particles with a diameter less than 2.5 micrometers. Aerosols like these make up less than 1 percent of the atmosphere. That\u2019s not a lot, Frost says, but all\u00a0air quality<\/a>\u00a0problems<\/a> have to do with these trace components. They harm crops, worsen visibility, and are small enough to lodge themselves into people\u2019s lungs, which can lead to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Tinier particles\u2014less than one micrometer across\u2014can even get into the bloodstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAirborne particulate matter is considered to be the top environmental health risk worldwide,\u201d says David Diner, a planetary scientist at NASA. But which types of PM 2.5 are most harmful to humans is still mostly a mystery. \u201cThere\u2019s always this question about whether our bodies are more sensitive to the size of these particles or their chemical composition,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

To find out, Diner is heading up NASA\u2019s first collaboration with major health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the Italian Space Agency, the groups are aiming to launch an observatory next year called MAIA, or Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols, which will sample the air over 11 of the planet\u2019s\u00a0most populous metropolitan areas, including Boston, Johannesburg, and Tel Aviv. The imager will measure sunlight scattering off of aerosols to learn about their sizes and chemical makeup. That data will be passed off to epidemiologists, who will combine it with information from ground-based monitors and compare it against public health records to figure out what sizes and mixtures of particles correlate with specific health problems, like emphysema, pregnancy complications, and premature death.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Working with health experts is key, Diner says, because they\u2019re trained to obtain and properly analyze birth, death, and hospitalization records while respecting patient privacy. Once the mission team understands which toxins, or blends of them, are most harmful, and can\u00a0track down their sources, \u201cthen perhaps society can more effectively regulate the particles that have the most detrimental impacts on human health,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s not the only agency tracking pollution from the skies. Tempo\u2019s predecessor is a South Korean instrument called the Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer, or GEMS, which has been observing pollution patterns over greater Asia since 2020. Within the next few years, the European Space Agency will launch the Copernicus Sentinel-4 satellite to do the same over Europe and North Africa.\u00a0This satellite\u00a0constellation will provide the first comprehensive view of air quality over the entire northern hemisphere, letting scientists track how pollution travels over great distances, when it leaves the range of one spacecraft and pops up in another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No such network is planned for the southern hemisphere\u2014yet. But, Lefer says, research is underway with NOAA to convert measurements from existing satellites into viable PM 2.5 readings for parts of the planet that lack ground-based monitors. Haynes leads NASA\u2019s Health and Air Quality Applications program and its\u00a0Applied Remote Sensing Training Program<\/a>, which runs free workshops to teach the public how to use NASA data for issues related to air quality, fire risk, and conservation. Both NASA scientists envision a future with international teams running satellites, aircraft, and ground-sensing instruments while working with\u00a0epidemiologists, socioeconomic experts, policymakers, and citizen scientists. \u201cAll of these are coming together to really make a golden age of using Earth observations for understanding air quality and health,\u201d Haynes says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Satellite data is already showing that the atmosphere is clearing up.\u00a0Sulfur levels are so low<\/a>, Haynes says, that they\u2019re getting hard to measure from space. Nitrogen dioxide has\u00a0decreased 50 percent<\/a> in some areas. And Haynes can\u2019t see the smog over the interstate anymore: \u201cAir quality in the United States is cleaner now than at any time in the modern industrial age,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0have a clean environment, and also a healthy economy and healthy population\u2014all at the same time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Katrina Miller<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When meteorologist John Haynes moved to Washington, DC, 20 years ago, he could stand on the rooftop of NASA headquarters and see airborne traces of the nearby\u00a0interstate highway\u2014there was\u00a0that\u00a0much pollution. \u201cThere was a cloud of smog that just followed the freeway,\u201d he says, \u201call the way out into Virginia.\u201d\u00a0 A decade later, NASA started planting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":626829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[534,2370,847],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-626828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-financial","8":"category-getting","9":"category-really"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}