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Abstract
The growth of human population and the industrialisation in the 19th and 20 th century has led to dramatic changes in the Earth System. The chemical composition of the lowest part of the atmosphere, the troposphere, is changing as a result of human activities. The Earth has entered the “Anthropocene” epoch, where the activities of humans play a key role in air quality and climate change. The rapid development of megacities and the strong development in the Asian countries are clear examples of rapid changes that affected the atmosphere in the last decades and will continue to do so in the future.
Fur understanding climate change and air quality, global changes in the chemical composition of the troposphere need to be taken into account/addressed. Especially the global inventory of emission sources play a key role in understanding and modelling the troposphere in relation to climate change and air pollution. Also regional and long-range transport of pollution, as well as the rapid development of pollution levels during the day, are important for understanding air quality and climate change and their interaction
Atmospheric measurements from space started in the 70th’s with US sensors SBUV and TOMS, focussing on the ozone layer residing in the higher layers in the atmosphere. Sensing the lower atmospheric layers from space is a recent development in satellite remote sensing, where SCIAMACHY (on board ESA’s ENVISAT), OMI (on board NASA’s EOS-Aura) and GOME-2 (on board METOP-1) instruments play a leading role. Unprecedented measurements from space from OMI reveal tropospheric pollution maps on a daily basis with urban scale resolution. Measurements from Thermal Infrared instruments like IASI and TES also provide unique information on the troposphere, providing tropospheric profile information.
In this presentation an overview will be given of satellite measurements from space of the chemical composition of the troposphere and their role in climate change and air pollution. Also challenges and future developments for tropospheric measurements from space will be discussed, including the Dutch initiative satellite instrument (TROPOMI) for detection of the tropospheric composition.