The natural-color image above was captured by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite on March 14, 2014. The pollution, which appears gray, is most visible just south of the bank of low clouds near and over the English Channel. Although a number of pollutants can have a negative effect on human health, PM2.5 has the most impact on visibility in natural-color satellite images like this.
Normally temperatures decline with altitude, but meteorological conditions across Europe in mid March set up a situation in which the opposite occurred. For a few days, temperatures increased with altitude, a circumstance known as a temperature inversion. As a result, the layer of warm air functioned like a lid, trapping pollutants near the ground and preventing winds from dispersing them.
“Europe has been under a persistent high-pressure system that brought fair weather and clear skies to much of the continent,” explained Bryan Duncan, an air quality expert based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and deputy project scientist for the Aura satellite. “We had the perfect set up for stable air and a pollution event because it was very warm during the afternoons but quite cool at night,” he said. Duncan passed through Paris during the height of the pollution outbreak while traveling back from a conference in the Netherlands.
Although high for Europe, the severity of the pollution paled in comparison to recent outbreaks in Asia. For instance, during January 2013, air pollution levels in Beijing soared above 800 micrograms per meter, causing a thick pall of gray to completely obscure the landscape in satellite imagery. A bad air quality day in Europe looks fairly clear in comparison.
“When looking at satellite imagery like this, remember that the satellite shows the vertical column concentration [of pollution], not just the surface concentration,” explained Rudolf Husar, an atmospheric scientist at Washington University. “In this case, the pollution was confined to a shallow layer that was less than 500 meters (1,600 feet) thick, so the haze appears light.”
Despite this recent outbreak, longer-term trends show the air over France has grown cleaner in recent decades. Emissions of pollutants that produce PM2.5 pollution has declined by about 50 percent between 1990 and 2011, according to a report published by the European Environment Agency. In France, the energy sector accounts for about 57 percent of PM2.5 pollution, transportation for 20 percent, industry for 16 percent, and agriculture for 4 percent.
To combat the haze, French authorities took the rare step of temporarily barring half of all vehicles from the road and making public transportation systems free. The last time France took similar steps because of air pollution was 1997, according to the BBC.
References and Further Reading
- BBC (2014, March 17) Paris car ban starts after pollution hits high. Accessed March 17, 2014.
- European Environment Agency (2013, October 15) Air Quality in Europe: 2013 Report. Accessed March 17, 2014.
- European Environment Agency (2013, October 15) France Air Pollution country fact sheet. Accessed March 17, 2014.
- Earth Observatory The Global Toll of Particulate Matter.
- The Weather Channel (2014, March 17) France Pollution: Smog Shrouds Paris; City Takes Drastic Measure to Fight it. Accessed March 17, 2014.
- The Guardian (2014, March 17) Does Paris have worse air pollution than Beijing? No. Accessed March 17, 2014.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.
Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense.
Caption by Adam Voiland.
- Instrument(s):
- Suomi NPP - VIIRS - NASA
