Carbon Monoxide is a gas that can be found in our Atmosphere and its presence is mainly due to the burning of fossils fuels and biomass (e.g forest or bushfires) and human activities in general. It is considered a pollutant species of the atmosphere and in this respect the carbon monoxide distribution is an index of the quality of the air we breathe. In the frame of the Copernicus Programme the Sentinel-5P mission, with its TROPOMI instrument, has been designed to measure and monitor this gas, together with several other species impacting the air quality. Earth Starts Beating wants to give its own contribution with the post processing and visualization of S-5p carbon monoxide data.

The image above is a composite product of seven months of data acquired from January to July 2019 and shows an average distribution of Carbon Monoxide retrieved from the total atmospheric column expressed in 10^18 molecules per cm^2. The areas interested by an high distribution of this gas are the central part of Africa (probably due to the systematic wildfires) and China (showing a sever pollution). The Northern Hemisphere appears as the one more impacted by a medium-high presence of carbon monoxide, whereas mountain ranges as Himalaya and the Andes can offer fresh air!

This is also evident in the animation below, showing a monthly distribution spanning from the beginning of 2019 to October. This animation has been generated from the images provided by the ESB EO Browser, application based on the Worldwind Explorer and operational on the ONDA-DIAS infrastructure together with all the Earth Starts Beating processors generating L3 Sentinels Product on monthly basis.

Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2019.