U.S. Air Quality

Special Feature: GEOSS Summit in South Africa

This week, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) holds its Ministerial Summit in Cape Town, South Africa. GEO manages the development of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), an international distributed network of space- and ground-based monitors to observe the Earth's land, water, and air. Many of the sensors that we use here at the Smog Blog are becoming part of GEOSS and we believe such an international effort will increase the monitoring and understanding of air quality throughout the world.

During the week of the GEO Summit, we'll be making special daily posts on the air quality in South Africa. We'll start today with a NASA MODIS image of the west coast of South Africa, including Cape Town, and a map to orient our images throughout the week. A few small clouds and good air quality for the South Africa today. NO2 values from OMI are slightly elevated near Johannesburg, but otherwise the air quality in the country is good at the beginning of the GEO Summit week.

Update: Here (left image) are data from the ground-based air quality monitors in Cape Town from the City of Cape Town Air Quality Monitoring Network. All the monitors are 'green' indicating good air quality. Aerosol optical thickness from the PARASOL satellite instrument (right) was also very low, less than 0.05, indicating very low fine particle concentrations (click on the image to see it at full size).