ESA Portal - Global air pollution map produced by Envisat's SCIAMACHY

Media Centre

Press Releases ESA Television Launch Media Corner Exhibitions

Services

Calendar Publications Frequently asked questions ESA-sponsored Conferences Help Site Credits Portal terms of use Comments Subscribe

Global air pollution map produced by Envisat's SCIAMACHY

11 October 2004

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES JPG (Size: 1632 kb)

HI-RES TIFF (Size: 7 827kb)

The image shows the global mean tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) vertical column density (VCD) between January 2003 and June 2004, as measured by the SCIAMACHY instrument on ESA's Envisat.
The scale is in 10¹⁵ molecules/cm^-2.

Image produced by S. Beirle, U. Platt and T. Wagner of the University of Heidelberg's Institute for Environmental Physics.

Credits: University of Heidelberg

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES JPG (Size: 1999 kb)

HI-RES TIFF (Size: 7 122kb)

A detail from the earlier image shows the European mean tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) vertical column density (VCD) between January 2003 and June 2004, as measured by the SCIAMACHY instrument on ESA's Envisat. The scale is 10¹⁵ molecules/cm^-2. Image produced by S. Beirle, U. Platt and T. Wagner of the University of Heidelberg's Institute for Environmental Physics.

Credits: University of Heidelberg

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES JPG (Size: 876 kb)

ESA's ten-instrument Envisat environmental satellite has been observing the Earth for more than three years. Picture by EADS Astrium.

Credits: EADS Astrium

Back to article

SCIAMACHY will detect many different trace gases

The high resolution and the wide wavelength range of the SCIAMACHY instrument makes it possible to detect many different trace gases.

Credits: ESA

Back to article

Comparing the spatial resolution of GOME and SCIAMACHY. The two images show mean tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) vertical column density (VCD) for August 2002, as resolved by the two sensors. SCIAMACHY has superior resolution, with a typical pixel size of 60 x 30 km compared to an elongated 320 x 40 km for GOME. The result is that individual city sources can be seen. For SCIAMACHY all available raw data for August 2002 are used. For GOME only pixels with corresponding SCIAMACHY measurements are shown. The units measured are 10¹⁵ molecules/cm^-2. Images from the University of Bremen.

Credits: University of Bremen

Back to article

Download:

HI-RES JPG (Size: 326 kb)

The Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) method enables the detection of very weak absorption structures in the spectra of backscattered sun light measured by the satellite instrument. In the centre a spectrum of sunlight scattered back from the earth’s atmosphere is shown. From such spectra the absorption structures of various atmospheric trace gases can be retrieved simultaneously. Graphic from T. Wagner, University of Heidelberg's Institute for Environmental Physics.

Credits: University of Heidelberg

About SCIAMACHY

Back to article

SCIAMACHY is an imaging spectrometer whose primary mission objective is to perform global measurements of trace gases in the troposphere and in the stratosphere. The solar radiation transmitted, backscattered and reflected from the atmosphere is recorded at relatively high resolution (0.2 nm to 0.5 nm) over the range 240 nm to 1700 nm, and in selected regions between 2.0 µm and 2.4 µm.

Credits: ESA