Global Air Quality

Am getting a "server cannot be found"??

-from the link...

 

...poor NJ/NYC pay the price of all the coal plants and traffic upstream. Cheap nat gas since 2005 has cut coal use...that appears to be helping.

 

Its pretty clear that the US picture has most of the US clean, although some would say not clean enough. Problems focus on california, which has by far the worst problems even after decades of CARB. Next comes NJ area including parts of DE, NY, PA, MD, VA with lots of polluting plants in the area. Finally we have the chicago area with many coal plants in indiana that thankfully will close soon. That leaves us with East coast west coast bad air. Obviously EPA is doing fine for the non-CARB states, but higher CARB regulations don't seem to cut it for those CARB states. Perhaps they are focused on the wrong things and EPA should impose special rules for states in non compliance instead of rellying on CARB which seems focused on ghg and fuel cell vehicles instead of clean air.

For diesel problems, go to paris or london, you can see the pollution. Perhaps the view from space is not clear enough. Diesel gate is real, but many europeans favored lower ghg over breathable air. You should look at this NOx chart to see european diesel versus US. Particulates are a different problem and I don't see that chart.

 

Houston gets a bye?

 

Houston when it hit number one, did a great deal to reduce air pollution. One of the biggest was though not regulatory but should have been, the bp texas city refinery notorious for breaking rules and killing people finally got fined enough for bp to sell it. Marathon invested in new equipment that now not only doesn't kill people, but no longer violates clean air regulation. Houston is an example of sucess, but it will take another decade for all the programs to drop it to the levels of a non-refiner city of its size.

When you look at those satelite pics houston cleaned up, but 6 MSAs in california are still out of compliance, you can clearly see 3 from space.

 

I'm still not convinced of that.

Paris apparently has many two-stroke mopeds which have very high emissions ("asymmetric pollution") relative to either gasoline or diesel passenger cars (
Two-stroke scooters are big polluters | News24
). The gasoline available in Paris also has a much higher aromatic content than what is sold in the U.S., Los Angeles anyway, and volatile (VOC) aromatics have high secondary organic particle (SOA) yields, not to mention are more reactive in terms of ozone production.

There was a paper published in the May 2015 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society regarding air quality in London and surrounding areas (Bohnenstengel et al., “Meteorology, Air Quality, and Health in London.”) According to that paper, London has a bigger problem with ambient ozone than ambient NO2 (only one day exceeded the NO2 ambient air quality standard during the study between January 2011 to January 2013, whereas the ozone AAQS was exceeded a total of 35 times).

Also, based on the black carbon portion of the ambient PM in London, diesel emissions at worst would only be responsible for 8% to 15% of the ambient PM10, even assuming all BC comes from diesel exhaust. The paper suggested most BC comes from domestic wood burning since BC levels peaked during the evening well after rush hour. This study at least in part pre-dated effectively requiring filters on diesel (Euro 5b went into effect in September 2011).

The NOx-from-diesel-vehicles issue certainly need to be address (especially if the NOx emission controls are intentionally disabled), but diesels are only one of many sources of pollution there.

 

Thanks for posting. Very interesting.

 

This is actually work related . Both photosynthesis and decomposition are affected by nitrogen availability, and you can see from exhibits above that it is highly variable across regions. The 'got better/got worse' charts rates of change (in downward direction at least) that people really did not expect.

Atmos.NO2 falls in rain as nitrate ion, pretty well correlated to the source. That, and nitrogen fixation by a few microbes represent all 'new nitrogen'. The amount already on hand is a different thing entirely. A few areas also have lots of ammonium from agriculture and penned animals.

For all that, people still rely on a 2005 study (that I'd rather not mention), quite wrong in detail. It clearly deserves an update.

Back to air for breathing, there are SO2 (sulfate) maps made pretty much the same way. For ozone, I frankly don't know how satellites filter out the much larger stratospheric amounts.

For particulates in general, global maps cannot separate windblown dust from smaller and more surface active combustion products. That is done with ground-level sampling.

 

The Goddard website provides 'color bar' to interpret the figures above, but do not include the numerical units. Will let you know if they respond to politely worded email.

 

Any pics showing the holes in the ozone layer over the poles?

DBCassidy

 

The global maps show local NO2 emissions. They fall as nitrate ion (rain and snow), regionally and in hot spots, may be accompanied by as much as an equal amount of ammonium (agriculture and animal husbandry. It is common ‘in the business’ to measure and discuss nitrogen inputs as kilograms per hectare per year. 75 kg ha-1 y-1 is a very high level; found only in the ‘reddest’ parts of the maps. 3 kg ha-1 y-1 is a very low level; found only in very remote locations. Careful collections and analyses are required to accurately measure such low levels.

However, kilograms N ha-1 y-1 are hard for general folks to visualize, so to spoil your Holiday Season, I offer a horrifying way to visualize nitrogen deposition. Supposed to be memorable, a typical teaching goal.

It is based on a soccer (non-American football) field, which is 0.7 hectares. You have seen them on TV at least. I use the players as nitrogen sources (poor fellows).

Now imagine just one of them dead on the field. A smallish one. That equals 3 kg N ha-1, and we hope it happens only once per season! That is at the low end of global N deposition. If all players on both teams (including goal defenders) die instead, that equals 75 kg N ha-1, near the high end of N deposition.

As with many teaching tools, this is simplified and leaves unanswered questions. Why did the poor fellow(s) die and get left in situ? How were they spread evenly across the field? What about their carbon, calcium, etc.? Was this all televised?

With all those shortcomings, it is a workable mental image for nitrogen-deposition flux density, because it uses something you have seen.

Highest agricultural fertilizer applicant rate I know is in this Asian country, for corn. It happens because food production is rather a thing, and government subsidizes fertilizer costs. It is 600 kg N ha-1 y-1. To imagine that, more soccer players will be required.

 

Again East Coast USA gets the downstream problems

 

This is 2 years old, but it shows how every country's pollution affects everyone's air quality. The article explaining it is here, the vid from youtube is below:

The Earth Has Lungs. Watch Them Breathe. – Phenomena: Curiously Krulwich

 

I learned of a 'consumer-grade' device to measure density of airborne particles in the interesting size range (microns)

Speck™

I'm not associated with the business and I don't have personal experience. Just want to put it on the table.

Now, $200 is real money, but 'serious science' equipment is way higher. So they might have applications where science funding is limited, or spatial replication is desired. I could anticipate side-by-side comparisons with Anderson impactors, or whatever the state of the art is now.

It appears to be just a light source and photocell, with substantial digital signal processing. A little light gets scattered and your desired signal is somewhere in there. It is not ionization based like Americium smoke detectors, though such could certainly be taken down a similar path.

By the way for about the same money you can measure CO2 with useful resolution and precision. Different subject, and from a different company.

 

I would not guess. Suggest attempt direct contact.

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