A new view on air quality from space
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A new view on air quality from space

by Pepijn Veefkind

On 13 October 2017 the Copernicus Sentinel 5 Precursor satellite was launched. The image shows one of the first results from the TROPOMI instrument, a map of nitrogen dioxide concentrations over Europe in on 22 November 2017. In cases of of clouds the image shows an RGB map of the world. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is an important gas for air quality and is produced by a.o. power plants, traffic and industry. The TROPOMI instrument improves the spatial resolution by a factor of 10 compared to previous satellite missions.