Image detail: MODIS image of fires and smoke transport from Florida

With rising human population and an increasingly urbanized world, air quality continues to degrade significantly. While developed countries continue to invest in newer technologies to reduce pollution, the developing countries face a serious problem of air pollution related illnesses and deaths. There are not enough ground-based air quality networks to monitor, let alone forecast next day air quality and therefore satellite remote sensing will be the only viable option to monitor global air quality. Our group is dedicated towards using satellite technologies to monitor global air pollution. We use all available data sets to first provide a quantitative measure of air quality in urban areas and use several other approaches including modeling and neural networks to forecast particulate matter air quality. Our work utilizes leading edge satellite products such as biomass burning fires and use them in chemistry models to forecast air quality.

Key Reference

Hoff, R., S.A. Christopher, Remote Sensing of Particualte Matter Air Pollution from Space : Have we reached the promised land, J. Air&Waste Manage. Assoc., 59:642-675 - (pdf  file) , May, 2009.