Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) and its Applications

#Geoscience #& #Remote #Sensing #Society

TEMPO will launch in late 2022 to measure pollution of North America, from Mexico City to the Canadian tar/oil sands, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, hourly and at high spatial resolution. TEMPO spectroscopic measurements in the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths provide a tropospheric measurement suite that includes the key gases of tropospheric air pollution chemistry. Measurements are from geostationary orbit, to capture the inherent high variability in the diurnal cycle of emissions and chemistry. A small product spatial footprint resolves pollution sources at a sub-urban scale. Together, this temporal and spatial resolution improves emission inventories, monitors population exposure, and enables effective emission-control strategies.

TEMPO takes advantage of a geostationary (GEO) host spacecraft to provide a mission that is capable of measuring the spectra required to retrieve O₃, NO₂, HONO, SO₂, H₂CO, C₂H₂O₂, H₂O, aerosols, cloud parameters, and Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation. TEMPO thus can measure the major elements, directly or by proxy, in the tropospheric O₃ chemistry cycle. Multi-spectral observations provide sensitivity to O₃in the lowermost troposphere, reducing uncertainty in air quality predictions. It provides near-real-time air quality products that will be made widely and publicly available.

This talk describes the TEMPO instrument and several of the numerous applications of TEMPO measurements to public health and the environment.