Air pollution monitoring using Sentinel-5 (Case study: big industrial cities of Iran)

Ghannadi, Mohammad Amin; Shahri, Matin; Moradi, Amirreza

doi:10.52547/envs.2022.1026

Air pollution monitoring using Sentinel-5 (Case study: big industrial cities of Iran)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Geoscience Engineering, Arak University of Technology, Arak, Iran

10.52547/envs.2022.1026

Abstract

Introduction: Air pollution and its negative effects on human health have become a major issue around the world, especially in developing countries and Iran. Contaminants such as nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and aerosols, in addition to having significant negative health consequences, cause to damage vegetation and contribute to global climate change. Therefore, the comprehensive monitoring of pollutants and, consequently, appropriate management decisions to address the issue is required. Remote sensing methods, especially Sentinel-5, the European Space Agency's most recent project (in collaboration with the Netherlands), which allows for the capture of images in various spectral bands using a TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) sensor, are recognized as a useful tool for monitoring various types of air pollutants.
Material and methods: In this analysis, the most significant air contaminants such as nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and aerosol were monitored using Sentinel-5 satellite images for 20 major industrial cities in Iran in 2019 and 2020. A large number of level-3 images collected from Google Earth Engine were used in this research. Ground-based stations were used to verify the monitoring process.
Results and discussion: The results show that monitoring values obtained using Sentinel-5 satellite images are at least 78 percent correlated with ground-based station values. As a result, it has been demonstrated that Sentinel-5 satellite images can be successfully used in management studies with the aim of reducing air pollution. Based on the results, it can also be inferred that, Tehran and Zanjan are respectively the most and the least polluted city in terms of total carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and dust in 2019. The same is true for 2020. It is also clear that air pollution levels in Karaj and Kermanshah increased significantly in 2020 compared to 2019. Another significant finding is that, in general, air pollution levels in 2020 are lower than in 2019. One significant explanation may be the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, which resulted in a decrease in industrial activity and reduced traffic and congestion on the roads.
Conclusion: In general, the results of this research showed that it is possible to systematically monitor the air pollutants using images captured by TROPOMI sensor on the Sentinel-5 satellite with acceptable accuracy. The results of this study can help researchers and urban managers for appropriate management in metropolitan areas.

Keywords

20.1001.1.17351324.1401.20.2.13.4

References

Bromandi, P., Karaca, F., Nikfal, A., Jahanbakhshi, A., Tamjidi, M. and Kim, J.R., 2020. Impact of COVID-19 event on the air quality in Iran. Aerosol and Air Quality Research. 20, 1793-1804.

Caiazzo, F., Ashok, A., Waitz, I.A., Yim, S.H. and Barrett, S.R., 2013. Air pollution and early deaths in the United States. Part I: Quantifying the impact of major sectors in 2005. Atmospheric Environment. 79, 198-208.

Chowdhury, S. and Dey, S., 2016. Cause-specific premature death from ambient PM2. 5 exposure in India: Estimate adjusted for baseline mortality. Environment International. 91, 283-290.

De Vries, J., Voors, R., Ording, B., Dingjan, J., Veefkind, P., Ludewig, A., Kleipool, Q., Hoogeveen, R. and Aben, I., 2016. TROPOMI on ESA’s Sentinel 5p ready for launch and use. In Proceedings 4^thInternational Conference on Remote Sensing and Geoinformation of the Environment (RSCy2016), 12 August, Paphos, Cyprus. p. 96880B-1- 96880B-12

Dickerson, R.R., Anderson, D.C. and Ren, X., 2019. On the use of data from commercial NOx analyzers for air pollution studies. Atmospheric Environment. 214, 116873.

Filippini, T., Rothman, K.J., Goffi, A., Ferarri, F., Maffeis, G., Orsini, N. and Vinceti, M., 2020. Satellite-detected tropospheric nitrogen dioxide and spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Northern Italy. Science of the Total Environment. 739, 140278.

Finney, D.L., Doherty, R.M., Wild, O., Young, P.J. and Butler, A., 2016. Response of lightning NO x emissions and ozone production to climate change: Insights from the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(10), 5492-5500.

Ghasempour, F., Sekertekin, A. and Kutoglu, S. H., 2021. Google Earth Engine based spatio-temporal analysis of air pollutants before and during the first wave COVID-19 outbreak over Turkey via remote sensing. Journal of Cleaner Production, 319, 128599.

Ghude, S.D., Chate, D.M., Jena, C., Beig, G., Kumar, R., Barth, M.C., Pfister, G.G., Fadnavis, S. and Pithani, P., 2016. Premature mortality in India due to PM2. 5 and ozone exposure. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(9), 4650-4658.

Greenberg, N., Carel, R.S., Derazne, E., Bibi, H., Shpriz, M., Tzur, D. and Portnov, B.A., 2016. Different effects of long-term exposures to SO2 and NO2 air pollutants on asthma severity in young adults. Journal of toxicology and environmental health, Part A, 79(8), 342-351.

Grewe, V., Dahlmann, K., Matthes, S. and Steinbrecht, W., 2012. Attributing ozone to NOx emissions: Implications for climate mitigation measures. Atmospheric environment, 59, 102-107.

Hedelt, P., Efremenko, D.S., Loyola, D.G., Spurr, R. and Clarisse, L., 2019. Sulfur dioxide layer height retrieval from Sentinel-5 Precursor/TROPOMI using FP_ILM. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 12(10), 5503-5517.

Ialongo, I., Virta, H., Eskes, H., Hovila, J. and Douros, J., 2020. Comparison of TROPOMI/Sentinel-5 Precursor NO2 product with ground-based observations in Helsinki and first societal applications. In EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, 4-8 May, p. 9963.

Kampa, M. and Castanas, E., 2008. Human health effects of air pollution. Environmental pollution, 151(2), 362-367.

Kim, S.W., Heckel, A., McKeen, S.A., Frost, G.J., Hsie, E.Y., Trainer, M.K., Richter, A., Burrows, J.P., Peckham, S.E. and Grell, G.A., 2006. Satellite‐observed US power plant NOx emission reductions and their impact on air quality. Geophysical Research Letters, 33(22).

Koukouli, M.-E., Skoulidou, I., Karavias, A., Parcharidis, I., Balis, D., Manders, A., Segers, A., Eskes, H. and Van Geffen, J., 2021. Sudden changes in nitrogen dioxide emissions over Greece due to lockdown after the outbreak of COVID-19. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 21, 1759-1774.

Lelieveld, J., Evans, J.S., Fnais, M., Giannadaki, D. and Pozzer, A., 2015. The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale. Nature, 525(7569), 367-371.

Li, H., Wang, J., Li, R. and Lu, H., 2019. Novel analysis–forecast system based on multi-objective optimization for air quality index. Journal of cleaner production, 208, 1365-1383.

Li, W., Thomas, R., El-Askary, H., Piechota, T., Struppa, D. and Ghaffar, K. A. A., 2020. Investigating the significance of aerosols in determining the coronavirus fatality rate among three European Countries. Earth Systems and Environment, 4, 513-522.

Lorente, A., Boersma, K.F., Eskes, H.J., Veefkind, J.P., Van Geffen, J.H.G.M., De Zeeuw, M.B., van der Gon, H.D., Beirle, S. and Krol, M.C., 2019. Quantification of nitrogen oxides emissions from build-up of pollution over Paris with TROPOMI. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-10.

Omrani, H., Omrani, B., Parmentier, B. and Helbich, M., 2020. Spatio-temporal data on the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide derived from Sentinel satellite for France. Data in brief, 28, 105089.

Park, J., Shin, M., Lee, J. and Lee, J., 2021. Estimating the effectiveness of vehicle emission regulations for reducing NOx from light-duty vehicles in Korea using on-road measurements. Science of The Total Environment, 767, 144250.

Prunet, P., Lezeaux, O., Camy-Peyeret, C. and Thevenon, H., 2020. Analysis of the NO2 tropospheric product from S5P TROPOMI for monitoring pollution at city scale. City and Environment Interactions, 8, 100051.

Quesada-Ruiz, S., Attié, J.L., Lahoz, W.A., Abida, R., Ricaud, P., Amraoui, L.E., Zbinden, R., Piacentini, A., Joly, M., Eskes, H. and Segers, A., 2020. Benefit of ozone observations from Sentinel-5P and future Sentinel-4 missions on tropospheric composition. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 13(1), 131-152.

Safarianzengir, V., Sobhani, B., Yazdani, M.H. and Kianian, M., 2020. Monitoring, analysis and spatial and temporal zoning of air pollution (carbon monoxide) using Sentinel-5 satellite data for health management in Iran, located in the Middle East. Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health, 13, 709-719.

Saxena, P. and Naik, V. eds., 2018. Air pollution: sources, impacts and controls. Methods for the meaturement of air pollutions. CABI, Nosworthy, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, 0X108DE, UK, 55-78.

Schneising, O., Buchwitz, M., Reuter, M., Bovensmann, H., Burrows, J. P., Borsdorff, T., Deutscher, N. M., Feist, D. G., Griffith, D. W. and Hase, F., 2019. A scientific algorithm to simultaneously retrieve carbon monoxide and methane from TROPOMI onboard Sentinel-5 Precursor. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 12, 6771-6802.

Shikwambana, L., Mhangara, P. and Mbatha, N., 2020. Trend analysis and first time observations of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in South Africa using TROPOMI/Sentinel-5 P data. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 91, 102130.

Sun, W., Zhu, L., De Smedt, I., Bai, B., Pu, D., Chen, Y., Shu, L., Wang, D., Fu, T. M. and Wang, X., 2021. Global significant changes in formaldehyde (HCHO) columns observed from space at the early stage of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, 2e020GL091265.

Theys, N., Hedelt, P., De Smedt, I., Lerot, C., Yu, H., Vlietinck, J., Pedergnana, M., Arellano, S., Galle, B., Fernandez, D. and Carlito, C.J.M., 2019. Global monitoring of volcanic SO 2 degassing with unprecedented resolution from TROPOMI onboard Sentinel-5 Precursor. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-10.

Tiwari, S., Bisht, D.S., Srivastava, A.K., Pipal, A.S., Taneja, A., Srivastava, M.K. and Attri, S.D., 2014. Variability in atmospheric particulates and meteorological effects on their mass concentrations over Delhi, India. Atmospheric Research, 145, 45-56.

Tiwari, S., Srivastava, A.K., Singh, A.K. and Singh, S., 2015. Identification of aerosol types over Indo-Gangetic Basin: implications to optical properties and associated radiative forcing. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 22(16), 12246-12260.

Vigouroux, C., Langerock, B., Bauer Aquino, C.A., Blumenstock, T., Cheng, Z., De Mazière, M., De Smedt, I., Grutter, M., Hannigan, J.W., Jones, N. and Kivi, R., 2020. TROPOMI–Sentinel-5 Precursor formaldehyde validation using an extensive network of ground-based Fourier-transform infrared stations. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 13(7), 3751-3767.

Vîrghileanu, M., Săvulescu, I., Mihai, B.A., Nistor, C. and Dobre, R., 2020. Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Pollution Monitoring with Sentinel-5P Satellite Imagery over Europe during the Coronavirus Pandemic Outbreak. Remote Sensing, 12(21), 3575.

Wang, L., Li, M., Yu, S., Chen, X., Li, Z., Zhang, Y., Jiang, L., Xia, Y., Li, J. and Liu, W., 2020. Unexpected rise of ozone in urban and rural areas, and sulfur dioxide in rural areas during the coronavirus city lockdown in Hangzhou, China: implications for air quality. Environmental Chemistry Letters, 18, 1713-1723.

Zhao, F., Liu, C., Cai, Z., Liu, X., Bak, J., Kim, J., Hu, Q., Xia, C., Zhang, C. and Sun, Y., 2021. Ozone profile retrievals from TROPOMI: Implication for the variation of tropospheric ozone during the outbreak of COVID-19 in China. Science of The Total Environment, 764, 142886.

Available online at: https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog

Available online at: https://aqms.doe.ir/Home/AQI