Global air pollution maps by the European Space Agency | Hacker News Reader

Global air pollution maps by the European Space Agency

esa.int

215 pointswalterbell71 comments

I'm amazed that their main call-to-action on that page is to download a screenshot of https://maps.s5p-pal.com/, including the baked-in zoom buttons that obviously don't work in a static image.

I’m on mobile and spent a good 45 seconds trying to click on the zoom in button before I decided that they just have a really bad mobile site. Ouch

I'm glad I'm not the only person who was baffled by this.

The map at https://maps.s5p-pal.com/ allows you to change the date. Comparing the 30-12-2019 - 13-01-2020 data to the latest makes a huge difference in certain areas.

Change years for the same month/day to exclude seasonal pollution differences.

Especially given that the date range GP mentions is peak winter for the Northern Hemisphere with higher heating requirements.

This should be the URL of this HN post, not the one of the PNG that the OP linked.

That data point is an outlier. 31-12 is usually celebrated with lots of fireworks.

I would expect that to be an outlier in the sulfur/sulfuric compounds concentration low to ground, but wouldn't expect it to show up in the NOx concentration satellites pick up (averaged over a fortnight and the whole of the troposphere). And indeed, if I compare the maps of Germany for the timeframe 23-12-2019 - 06-01-2020 with the one of 16-12-2019 - 30-12-2019, then I fail to see any reminiscence of the Sylvester Nacht.

At first sight I was thinking "Europe looks not bad in comparison with China or Middle East". But scroll back to pre-covid time (aka "winter" - jan/feb 2020) on https://maps.s5p-pal.com/:

https://imgur.com/a/Qkx0FPe

All of northern Italy is a one huge brown dot. Does someone have an explanation? I know this is very industrial region, but there are many industrial regions in Europe. What is used for heating houses in there?

A lot of industry + a major European airport + Alps keeping clouds stuck there.

For heating nost houses use gas (rom GAZPROM or North Africa as far as I remember), wooden pellets or wood

The mountains create a sort of trap for pollution in the air I believe.

It's not really house heating fault, when the lockdown started everyone was at home and pollution actually went down; the strong winds those days certainly contributed to clean up the air too. And yes, those days was still cold, people were actually using heating.

Anyway the Pianura Padana is completely flat and surrounded by mountains east, north and south, the sea on the east doesn't help that much either with its winds. If you compare the shape of that red/black blob to a satellite image you can clearly see it traces the shapes of the mountains.

Count the fact that it's also heavily industrialized and populated and I guess you get why it's not like other industrialized regions.

Link extracted from this announcement to the interactive website that allows viewing and navigating mapped air pollution history: https://maps.s5p-pal.com/

Yikes - just compared the latest map with the one in January - what a difference!

Worth noting that some of it relates to seasonality - compare October to July in each year, for example.

It makes it a little tricky to draw direct conclusions without more analysis, but it's still an impressive visualization to have available.

Coronavirus really hammered China's economic activity, and northern Italy as well.

Thanks, I was unable to find the map, where was the link?

In the first sentence ("new online platform"), and another time near the bottom of the details ("The mapping portal is available here:").

If anyone is wondering what happens in Australia in Winter (particularly NSW)[1], it looks like Eraring and Liddell power station are to blame [2].

Thankfully, the emissions from Eraring disappear from mid-Feb to May, which seems to indicate that renewable production (e.g. solar) really does shut down coal production, if it's sufficient to meet demand.

[1] 18th May to 1st June 2020 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraring_Power_Station and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liddell_Power_Station

It's a pity that Australia doesn't get much sun and has to rely on coal ;-)

The sarcasm was good natured but tempered by the fact that the US (my country) has waged a war on solar energy and continues to promote fossil fuels for the benefit of the patron class.

I was confused for a bit since the zoom didn't work but the actual map is at https://maps.s5p-pal.com/

Why doesn’t India have the same kinds of deep red as China?

The only thing I can come up with is their infrastructure is lacking, less roads and highways?

The map only shows NO2, not all pollutants.

How concerning should NO2 be?

I was surprised to see that on this map Tokyo seems worse off than Bangkok. On AQI measures it's typically the other way around.

The evidence so far is that on top of the expected lung disease in children and adults (due to lung tissue irritation) it more critically seems to reduce human lifespan. [0]

The challenge is to fully separate if this effect is due to NO2 exposure or a combination of other pollutants found in diesel fuel exhaust.

The key takeaway is that Diesel engines release a very high amount of NO2 and that NO2 is in all likelihood killing us slowly.

We need to decomission diesel engines from roads, and more urgently, remove diesel engines from city centres ASAP (Due to traffic jams, iddling diesel engines create very high concentrations of NO2 in the vicinity of pedestrians and cyclists).

[0] Nitrogen dioxide: health effects of exposure, Guidance from the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP), 2015

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nitrogen-dioxide-...

NO2 by itself is not too much concerning (it is toxic, but it appears in very low concentrations in the open). It just happens to be very easy to detect using hyperspectral images, and it is also a proxy for the existence of other pollutants.

Economy is still not on par.

As of 2018, China has 5x in GDP vs India. Population is comparable.

I'm guessing cause India is still in lockdown while china has resumed it's economy

Check before covid.

This is great to have another authoritative and trustworthy source of this data.

WHO used to have a really nice map I would often use, but it’s been down ever since China complained that it shows them in bad light. https://maps.who.int/airpollution/

It would consistently show China pollution levels as high which didn’t match the maps distributed by the Chinese government showing lower levels of pollution in the mainland.

You can thank the European Union (EU) for that, as these are images from EU-owned satellites.

While the European Space Agency is not officially part of the EU, the EU provides the vast majority of funding (93.0%).

One may not live as luxurious of a life in Europe, either by pay or after-tax amounts, but you do get a sense of solidarity and even stability (most of the time--although we have our issues). In the US, the sense of the future is gone, which is toxic.

The EU also has a recovery plan, which is very future-orientated: https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/health/coronav...

The EU funds the Copernicus program, among others, which is managed by the ESA. But it's not the case that the EU provides 93% of ESA's total funding, it provides on the order of 20%[1].

You seem to be quoting the 93% number from the table on Wikpedia[2]. That's not 93% from the EU, it's an aggregate 93% from countries that also happen to be members of the EU.

1. https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/ESA_and_the_EU

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency

Wrong thread?

Can I get a source on China shutting down the WHO map?

I have a friend who doesn’t believe the WHO is affected by them and this would help my case...

"who air pollution map shut down", "who air pollution map china" and "who air pollution map" turns up no results. It's a green account and their first comment was accusing someone of being a shill, so my bullshit meter is going off.

While I don't disagree with your analysis of the situation, it's worth noting that China has been hiding its pollution levels for a very long time.

I read a few years ago that the locals in Beijing use the pollution numbers posted on the American embassy's web site (recorded on the embassy grounds) because they can count on the Chinese government's numbers being false.

I’m almost more curious to see where this discussion goes.

30 seconds of googling, might be relevant? https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN0UV0XS

I'm actually working on something similar now, only the data is sourced from aerial images. I run a startup in this space and we were previously discarding a ton of data because of cloud cover, smog/fog, haze, etc. This is a great application for less useful data, among others (mostly meteorological).

That said, I wouldn't call any early stage startup an "authoritative" source despite my wanting to. Trustworthy for sure, though! Link to the beta is on my profile if you're interested.

OMS WHO

What's whit china and big 3 initial orgs

China is the second most powerful country on the planet and the multilateral orgs are a political field to control just like any other. China (and the US, EU, Russia, etc..) will always work hard to move forward their agenda in these forums.

In some ways that's one of the main purposes of the UN, WHO and all the other institutions; to create a space for dialogue and disagreement that reduces the number of hot conflicts.

> the maps distributed by the Chinese government

Do you have a link or copy to such maps published in recent times? I am curious how blatant is Chinese government.

http://www.mee.gov.cn/ywdt/dfnews/202001/t20200103_756808.sh...

For instance contains a few for Beijing. There are more reports and real time tracker on the site for AQI levels.

Why is Johannesburg so bad?

That isn't Joburg. It's the power plants in the province east of Joburg - Mpumalanga. There are coal deposits there so they built a bunch of coal plants. Three mega plants in that vicinity - Majuba, Kusile and bit further north Medupi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpumalanga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majuba_Power_Station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusile_Power_Station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station

Fascinating. thank you!

Btw, for those like me who didn't know what Jo'burg's province is called, it's Gauteng!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauteng

Are they just unusually dirty? It really stands out at a global-level, which is pretty "impressive".

I think it's a combination. Even by global standards these ones are very big plants and concentrated in a fairly small area. There are handful of other plants there too that I don't recall.

Dirty - yeah that too unfortunately. The plants tend to use worse grade coal (good stuff gets exported) and aside from Kusile they run without SO2 scrubbers, which is quite sketchy given the coal grade. Though this is a NO2 map so unsure how that translates. It's all a bit of a mess frankly

Was going to ask the same question. There also is a spot in Poland that’s not in a large city - was curious about that one as well. Some sort of NO2-generating production? Also between DRC and Angola.

The emitter in Poland seems to be the brown coal (lignite) power plant Bełchatów.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Stat...

https://www.bing.com/maps?v=2&cp=51.266111~19.330278&style=h...

I enjoyed this documentary on the topic:

SMOG WARS - Polish Air Pollution Documentary (Full International Version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs70ewSdEjE

What the hell is happening in Congo? There's no major cities around there like Johannesburg but seems to be a big ass blip on the map?

Possibly related to all the rare earth mines? Maybe they're burning diesel for power due to lack of infrastructure?

A nicer version of this map is embeded here [1] where you can compare two similar periods on the same map. It's more interesting to see the difference between the same period a year earlier than to compare winter to summer. Also have to factor in how cold the winter was in the area since that is a big impact where houses needs heating.

The comparison can be found in the right map window, click the button on the left of the date to compare two images by sliding a line left/right on the map.

[1] https://race.esa.int/?poi=World-N1

I'm surprised by the amount of NO2 present in the Atlanic off the west coast of Ireland. Given the prevailing winds, that must all be coming from the US. Or maybe it's pollution from airplanes?

I'd suspect ships (though I'm not sure what you mean when I look at the map). Tropospheric NO2 is usually not transported that far, although we do measure transported US pollution in Europe.

99.9% of the time the wind in Ireland comes from the south west. I'd have that area would have been as 'clean' as the air around Iceland.

There is a flight path over that area though[0], or as you suggested, it's possibly more likely to be shipping[1]. (That might explain the haze around the English channel too)

[0] https://www.flightradar24.com/40.32,-36.32/4 [1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/cent...

You can see the same pattern as in the English Channel, in the Antwerp and Rotterdam areas.

My guess is higher traffic of ships probably running at lower speeds (higher concentration of gases in the same volume).

Ships are also meant to change from crude bunker fuel (which spews really high concentrations of SO2) to finner diesel fuel (which spews high concentrations of NO2) when they get closer to ports.

It's a case of choose your poison with shipping, SO2 kills you now, NO2 kills you in the long run (it reduces human lifespan)

Is there any offshore oil or gas drilling in that region?

No, Ireland has no real oil & gas industry.

I like this site to visualise that kind of data

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ is also good for direct satellite data and derivatives.

Is there an accepted threshold for tropospheric NO2 concentrations above which it is considered harmful?

There are [1] but the bigger issue is that where NO2 is high, other toxins are also often high. You just can't measure them from space. Benzine is just one example of a carcinogen that can be higher in these areas. The data would need to be overlaid with ground sample data in the red zones.

[1] - https://www.airnow.gov/sites/default/files/2018-06/no2.pdf

I compared this to my mental map of population density and one region really stood out, the Indo-Gangetic plain. It has higher than normal pollution but nothing compared to what would be expected from the population density.

Scrolling back to December of 2019 shows a stark contrast.

But what if you scroll back to June of 2019? Not as much difference. Pollution is very seasonal.

Seems pretty different for Los Angeles. https://twitter.com/Jeffinatorator/status/127118987583268044...

This kind of information should be in weather forecasts.

What's going on in Belgium?

Habours (=many ships) and heavy industry of Antwerp and Rotterdam. You can also see the route the ships take on the west of Belguim, in the North Sea.

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