About Air Quality Research

Relevance

Air pollution causes more than 4 million premature deaths every year (2018) and more than 90% of the world’s population lives in areas where air quality is below the World Health Organization standard. Taking action is urgent because of the huge number of years of life lost due to air pollution.

Activities

Clear is focused on

  • Daily global mapping of key constituents, NO2, SO2, CO, CH4, aerosol, tropospheric O3, ammonia, NH3 using satellite observations
  • Continuous (hourly) mapping of air quality over Europe of key constituents, NO2, aerosol, tropospheric O3, CO, ammonia using state-of-the-art methods to combine satellite observations with in-situ measurements and modelling systems
  • Enable consistent and accurate emission observations for urban regions and large industrial emission sources.
  • Attribute air pollution events and related weather extremes to climate change (e.g. forest fires and ozone creation during heat waves.) and how climate extremes negatively impact air quality in Netherlands

Research activities include amongst others:

  • Develop of innovative satellite instruments for air pollutants and aerosols monitoring
  • Developing and speeding up air quality simulation models including at very high resolution
  • Use of satellites data to improve air quality modesling (assimilation)
  • Find optimal solutions for assimilation of aerosols formed in the atmosphere
  • Automated emission quantification chain L0- L4, including a multi-species approach (e.g. NO2/SO2/CO/HCHO).

What is the value?

The work of Clear air leads to improved emissions information and air quality forecasts and supports measures to reduce air pollution. Improving people’s health by reducing air pollution, responsible for the annual pre-mature death of over 4 million people per year globally.

Areas of research

The research and technology development work of Clear is focused on three main areas.

Biodiversity

Read more about the theme Biodiversity

Climate change

Read more about the theme Climate change

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