People will get sicker. More people will have heart attacks and lung disease and other health challenges because of pollution. People’s lives will get worse, and shorter. People you know. Maybe me. Maybe you.
Trump administration to dismantle key climate research center
Any such plan "would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters,” said Antonio Busalacchi, who oversees the center: www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
New 📄! We inter-compare satellite-based NASA TEMPO column NO2 with ground monitor surface NO2. Correlation is very good; best in the mid-AM and worst in the late-PM. The work highlights when and where satellite data best represents surface air quality. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
Very exciting to see geostationary air quality data to become available over Europe! Lots to learn!
The new Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission has delivered its first images, highlighting concentrations of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ozone. Despite being preliminary, these images mark a major milestone in Europe’s ability to monitor air quality all the way from geostationary orbit, 36 000 kilometres above Earth. This image depicts tropospheric nitrogen dioxide with clear pollution hotspots visible along the Mediterranean coast and over Italy’s Po Valley.
This image presents a vertical column density of sulphur dioxide. A distinct plume can be seen emerging from Mount Etna in Italy and drifting south-eastwards over the sea. Although Etna is currently relatively calm, much larger plumes are typically observed during periods of heightened volcanic activity. In addition to natural emissions from volcanoes, sulphur dioxide is also released through human activities, particularly from ships burning high-sulphur fuels and power plants using brown coal.
This image shows a vertical column of ozone. While ozone high up in the stratosphere plays a crucial role in shielding life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, ozone in the lower atmosphere acts as a pollutant, contributing to poor air quality and respiratory problems. The overall ozone levels here are within the expected range.
This image of Europe and part of North Africa is based on the first Earth radiance spectra measured by Sentinel-4. The false-colour image, generated by assigning the signals in specific spectral ranges to red, green and blue, shows the land, ocean and clouds as expected.
😎 First glimpses from space!
The new #Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission has delivered its first preliminary images during commissioning.
Sentinel-4’s spectrometer is hosted on @eumetsat.int's MTG-S1 satellite 🧪🌍
@josefaschbacher.esa.int @ec.europa.eu @esaearth.esa.int
☹️ But can you attend as "Bryan" Stauffer, an unassuming citizen who has an obsessive interest in ozonesonde calibration? In all seriousness, hoping for a resolution within the week🤞
Found this somewhat positive news: Maryland & DC have 50% less CO2 emissions than 20 years ago (www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...) A portion of this decrease is because coal plants closed in-state and out-of-state coal plants took some of the load. Nonetheless, don't lose sight of the progress we've made!
Things being what they are these days, genuinely good and encouraging news is the rarest of unicorns. So when I say that this discussion left me heartened and optimistic in a way few things have lately, I mean it. A must listen talk between @chrislhayes.bsky.social and @billmckibben.bsky.social
Happy 21st birthday to NASA’s Aura satellite, launched 15 July 2004. It revolutionized atmospheric composition measurements from space and sustained mutually beneficial validation activities such as our SHADOZ ozonesonde network. science.nasa.gov/mission/aura/
Almost 2 years of TEMPO NO2 data now available. NO2 air pollution cannot hide!
While this NO2 map looks 🤩, NO2 pollution declines have stagnated over the past 10 years or so. The plot should be more blue by now...
MethaneSAT unfortunately has been lost ☹️
BUT there's still about 11 months worth of data that will continue to be useful. AND we still have TROPOMI, GHGSAT, and the GOSAT series as methane-tracking alternatives. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/c...
Sentinel 4 and GOSAT-GW have been successfully launched! New air pollution and climate measurements coming soon led by EU and Japan respectively
Sentinel 4: NO2, HCHO, etc. every hr over Europe
GOSAT-GW: NO2 & CO2 globally
spaceflightnow.com/2025/07/01/l...
www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/06/gosa...
Economists warn: Trump’s science cuts threaten the U.S. economy.
Slashing funding for NIH, NSF, and NASA hurts every American. These cuts are killing jobs, stalling innovation, and shrinking our economic future.
We all pay the price when science is defunded.
www.npr.org/2025/05/08/n...
In a series of terrible but unsurprising decisions, this is terrible and surprising... Democrats voting against EVs. It's hard to overstate how successful the oil&gas propaganda machine is. Enough Democrats are falling for it (and to be fair I used to too)
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/c...
Yesterday 30 Apr, the TROPOMI sensor on the Sentinel-5P satellite observed large amounts of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) originating from metro regions in the Northeast US & southern Canada, including New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh & Toronto. @dgoldbergaq.bsky.social
Next exciting satellite to measure air quality and greenhouse gases to launch in less than 2 months, June 24, 2025. GOSAT-GW to be launched by the Japanese (JAXA). Measuring CO2, CH4 and NO2 at the same time 😍 www.nies.go.jp/whatsnew/202...
😢
Image credit: NOAA On Dec. 21, 2024, NOAA’s GOES-19 captured this image of Earth during the winter solstice shortly after the Northern Hemisphere reached its maximum tilt away from the sun, positioning the sun directly over the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.5° south latitude.
🌍 This #EarthDay, science needs you more than ever.
We celebrate our planet through stunning imagery and vital data—but we can’t protect what we don’t understand.
#StandUpForScience #AGUAction
You know what pisses me off the most? NASA's budget is a meager 0.48% of the annual federal budget. The "savings" of cutting its $23b budget in half is less than a penny on the dollar (~$0.0024/dollar). It's hardly a drop in the ocean, but the science and progress we'd lose would be immeasurable.
In a series of very bad news, this is very very bad news. It boggles my mind that anyone thinks that not monitoring our Earth somehow makes humanity better off.
Under mostly cloud-free skies yesterday 8 Apr, the TROPOMI sensor on the Sentinel 5-P satellite shows buildup of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from urban regions across western Europe (dark red shading). @esaearth.esa.int @dgoldbergaq.bsky.social
A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.
Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.
"Delivery of up to 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of power to support AI-driven hyperscale data centers, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60–65% per megawatt hour compared to the former coal plant."
How's that for some spin! Coal plant closed in 2023! So this will generate infinity more emissions...
Victoria Lang's (@victorialangwx.bsky.social) community-inspired study, Assessing the air quality, public health, and equity implications of an Advanced Clean Trucks policy for Illinois, is now available open access for mass consumption journal.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/10....
Come work with us.
The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health is searching for a public health scholar whose work is at the intersection of environmental/occupational health and prevention/community health.
Please check out the announcement:
At least the European Space Agency has some amazing (and free!) satellite instruments that will help us keep an eye on US air quality regardless of what the US does... 🤦♂️
(I posted this before checking the EPA AQS monitoring network, which of course confirmed my suspicion. >30 ppb NO2 across the region, which is 6x the annual 24-hr WHO guideline for reference).
Bright blue skies on a spring day. But with the smell of VOCs and NO2
This morning... bright blue skies. Tree buds starting to open. Birds chirping. Cool start but warm in the afternoon.
You step outside and try to smell the fresh air and instead you smell something else...
It's hazardous VOCs and NO2 from cars & trucks. We NEVER should be normalizing this.
This article reminds me of my junior year environmental ethics debate on whether pollution is good for the economy. Is pollution a secret ploy to produce health care jobs? I said no.
Also, these cuts seem like a bad idea if you like being alive and healthy
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Increased health cost for seniors & others will go up in response to a weaker #EPA. It's actually much more efficient to not pollute in the first place
