Highlight

Ammonia in Paris derived from ground-based open-path and satellite observations

Ammonia (NH3) is an air pollutant mainly emitted from the agriculture sector with an increasing part from traffic that is highly uncertain in urban areas. NH3 is a highly reactive gas capable of forming fine particulate matter which are harmful for human health. Monitoring NH3 is therefore essential, especially in urban areas such as in […]

07.06.2024

Ethylene industrial emitters seen from space

Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in improving the monitoring of the Earth’s atmosphere and our understanding of the impact that human activities have on air pollution. IASI/Metop is one of these satellite instruments capable of mapping the chemical composition of the atmosphere globally and in near-real time. In a recent study, […]

05.07.2023

How did ozone pollution evolve during the COVID-19 lockdown of spring 2020? 

In the boreal spring of 2020, worldwide measures for curbing the spread of the COVID-19 virus have led to unprecedented and abrupt lockdowns in transportation and industry. They have led to sharp decrease of emissions of anthropogenic pollutants that induced significant changes in the composition of the atmosphere from city to hemispheric scale. Using an […]

29.11.2022

Homogeneous temperature data record derived from 13 years of IASI data using an artificial neural network

Bouillon et al. (2022) recently designed a neural network to retrieve atmospheric temperatures from the IASI radiance data. This new temperature data record is validated against other datasets and a good agreement is shown. Trends were computed from this new temperature dataset over the 2008–2020 period. A general warming of the troposphere, more important at […]

05.04.2022

Humidity levels to determine future liveability in the Arabian Peninsula

Human survivability in hot regions does not depend only on temperature, but also on humidity levels in ambient air. In fact, the body’s ability to shed heat is diminished when the air around it is saturated with humidity. The wet bulb temperature (also called heat stress) is the temperature of the air when it is […]

25.03.2022

Trends in spectrally resolved outgoing longwave radiation from 10 years of satellite measurements

By analyzing the changes in the spectrally resolved Earth’s Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) from 10 years of daily IASI observations, Whitburn et al. (2021) have highlighted the impact of large climate phenomena (in particular El Niño) on the surface and atmospheric temperature and atmospheric composition. More interesting from a longer-term climate monitoring perspective, they were […]

25.11.2021

Smallest 2019 ozone hole ever recorded by IASI over Antarctica

While sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events are more common in the Northern Hemisphere, Safieddine et al. (2020) investigated the rare SSW event in the Southern Hemisphere that occurred in 2019 using satellite and ground-based station data. They demonstrated the ability of the IASI instruments to detect simultaneously the stratospheric warming and the evolution of the […]

16.12.2020

Contribution of ammonia to the formation of fine particulate matter over Paris

The Paris megacity faces frequent fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution episodes in spring. At this period of the year, large numbers of the particles consist of ammonium sulfate and nitrate which are formed from ammonia (NH3) released during fertilizer spreading practices and transported from the surrounding areas to Paris. However, there is still limited knowledge […]

26.01.2020

Spaceborne Measurements of Formic and Acetic Acid: A Global View of the Regional Sources

Formic (HCOOH) and acetic (CH3COOH) acids are the most abundant carboxylic acids in the Earth’s atmosphere and contribute to the acidity of rainwater and cloud. Current knowledge is however unable to explain their elevated concentration levels measured in the atmosphere since their sources remain poorly known and quantified. The first measurements of acetic acid atmospheric […]

14.01.2020

Search