Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: AGU Advances

Air quality is a growing threat to public health, with risks expanding from the historic industrial areas of the Global North to the developing economies of the Global South. Increasing scientific understanding from the lab, process studies, and field campaigns has led to ever-more effective mitigation measures, while also elucidating the interactive role of the biosphere’s biomass burning and volatile organic emissions. In situ measurements can guide mitigation, but increasingly the tools of choice are high resolution, frequent data from space.

Millet et al. [2024] explore the current constellation of sounders. They note that current plans emphasize measurements in the ultraviolet through visible portion of the spectrum. Gases observable in the infrared are obtained as a by-product of water vapor and temperature sounders and are not operationally produced. Gases observable in the thermal infrared regions, and not currently prioritized, include ammonia—with sources in agriculture and a source of atmospheric particulate matter; isoprene—emitted by forests and a central driver of tropospheric chemistry; and peroxyacetyl nitrate, which enables long range transport of reactive nitrogen. The authors argue for a coordinated global constellation spanning ultraviolet through the thermal infrared to address issues of both global concern and health equity between developed and developing regions. 

Citation: Millet, D. B., Palmer, P. I., Levelt, P. F., Gallardo, L., & Shikwambana, L. (2024). Coordinated geostationary, multispectral satellite observations are critical for climate and air quality progress. AGU Advances, 5, e2024AV001322. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024AV001322

—David S. Schimel, Editor, AGU Advances

Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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