Monitoring air quality from space: fast retrievals of short-lived atmospheric pollutants and precursors

从太空监测空气质量：快速检索短期大气污染物和前体

• 批准号: 2609224
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Leicester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2609224
• 关键词: Monitoring; air; quality; space; fast

Climate change and air quality are the most pressing environmental issues of our lifetime, and they are inextricably linked.Nitrogen oxides (primarily produced through combustion processes) and volatile organic compounds are precursors of tropospheric ozone, a strong greenhouse gas and one of the largest components of the radiative forcing of climate (after carbon dioxide and methane). They are also precursors of secondary aerosols, also known as particulate matter, the most harmful form of air pollution, particularly if smaller than 2.5 micron in diameter (PM2.5) and are able to penetrate deep into the lungs, blood streams and brain, leading to ill health and premature death. These aerosols are reflective, scattering solar radiation back to space, and tend to have a cooling effect on climate. Therefore, efforts to improve air quality will likely lead to further increases in temperature. On the other hand, these temperature increases will lead to changes in the chemistry associated with tropospheric ozone formation. Increases in temperature will also lead to an increase in the VOCs emitted from vegetation, providing more ozone and PM2.5 precursor.A number of atmospheric sounders, with low radiometric noise and high spectral resolution, measure upwelling radiances in the thermal infrared spectral region; from these measurements we can determine the concentrations of many short-lived pollutants and precursors, e.g. ammonia, largely arising from agricultural sources (primarily ammonia-based fertilizers and animal manure), which significantly contributes to the formation of PM2.5; isoprene, the dominant biogenic volatile organic compound emitted by vegetation, which is chemically reactive and leads to the production of tropospheric ozone and secondary aerosols; as well as a wealth of pollutants produced from fires, such as methanol, formic acid, peroxyacetyl nitrate, ethene, and ethyne. We live in an age when satellite-based measurements of atmospheric composition are becoming more and more ubiquitous. The ever increasing amounts of data available, which are only going to increase in the future, will require smarter and faster computational methods to extract meaningful information from these observations. Traditional retrieval methods based on line-by-line radiative transfer models are slow but accurate. The challenge is to maintain this accuracy whilst significantly improving the speed.

气候变化和空气质量是我们一生中最紧迫的环境问题，它们之间有着千丝万缕的联系。氮氧化物（主要通过燃烧过程产生）和挥发性有机化合物是对流层臭氧的前体，对流层臭氧是一种强烈的温室气体，是气候辐射强迫的最大组成部分之一（仅次于二氧化碳和甲烷）。它们也是二次气溶胶的前体，也被称为颗粒物，这是最有害的空气污染形式，特别是直径小于2.5微米（PM2.5）的空气污染，并且能够深入肺部，血液和大脑，导致健康不良和过早死亡。这些气溶胶是反射性的，将太阳辐射散射回太空，并往往对气候产生冷却作用。因此，改善空气质量的努力可能会导致气温进一步上升。另一方面，这些温度升高将导致与对流层臭氧形成有关的化学变化。温度的升高也会导致植被排放的VOCs增加，产生更多的臭氧和PM2.5。一些大气探测仪具有低辐射噪声和高光谱分辨率，可以测量热红外光谱区的上升流辐射;从这些测量中，我们可以确定许多短寿命污染物和前体的浓度，例如氨，主要来自农业异戊二烯是植被排放的主要生物挥发性有机化合物，具有化学反应性，导致对流层臭氧和二次气溶胶的产生;以及由火灾产生的大量污染物，例如甲醇、甲酸、过氧乙酰硝酸盐、乙烯和乙炔。我们生活在一个基于卫星的大气成分测量变得越来越普遍的时代。不断增加的可用数据量在未来只会增加，这将需要更智能，更快速的计算方法来从这些观测中提取有意义的信息。传统的基于逐线辐射传输模型的反演方法速度慢但精度高。挑战在于保持这种精度，同时显著提高速度。