HAVING TURNED CO2 EMISSIONS INTO REALITY TV, NASA WILL PUT OZONE, FORMALDEHYDE, & NOx ON PRIME-TIME
COMING THIS AUGUST TO A SKY NEAR YOU
The TEMPO instrument is a grating spectrometer, sensitive to
visible and ultraviolet wavelengths of light, attached to…
a satellite in geostationary orbit. This allows TEMPO to
maintain a constant view of North America [and] make a
complete East to West scan... every hour of ozone, nitrogen
dioxide, and other ... daily atmospheric chemistry cycles.
The instrument... resolves a few square miles per pixel, so
that pollution can be tracked at sub-urban scales. TEMPO's
dataset showing daily (and hourly) variations in the concentrations
of these pollutants will… monitor the changing "chemical weather"
locally, regionally, and across the continent.
The key instrument characteristics and capabilities are:
- Spectral range: 290–740 nm (UV, VIS); spectral sampling: 0.2 nm; spectral resolution: 0.6 nm. Two 2D detectors (2 k x 1 k pixels) images the full spectral range except for a gap from 490–540 nm for each geospatial scene.
- Spatial resolution: 2 km/pixel in the north-south direction, 4.5 km /pixel in the east-west direction at the center of the FOR (Field of Regard) which is desired to be 36.5° N, 100° W. Co-add/cloud clear as needed for specific data products.
- Hourly measurements stepping east to west of the entire FOR (2.5 x 106 spectra/hour).
- Standard data products and sampling rates:
- NO2, O3, aerosol, and cloud products sampled hourly, including eXceL O3 for selected target areas
- H2CO, C2H2O2, SO2 sampled 3 times/day (hourly samples averaged to get S/N)
- Product spatial resolution ≤ 8 km N/S x 4.5 km E/W at center of domain
- Signal/noise requirements met at SZA (Solar Zenith Angles) less than 50° for all products—and at angles up to 70° for NO2, clouds, and aerosols.
- Ozone profile products include 0–2 km O3, free tropospheric O3, and the stratospheric O3 column.
