Observing controls over the temporal variability in census-tract-level nitrogen dioxide air pollution inequality in major U.S. cities with TROPOMI
Abstract
Low-income and people of color experience higher levels of air pollution in U.S. cities. In a recently published paper, we demonstrated that TROPOMI, onboard the sun-synchronous Sentinel 5P satellite, captures similar relative nitrogen dioxide (NO2) inequalities at the census-tract-level in Houston, Texas compared to higher resolution sub-orbital remote sensing. Here we expand on that analysis, using TROPOMI to evaluate NO2 inequality in major cities across the U.S. We use the first two years of observations from TROPOMI (June 2018-February 2020), oversampled to 0.01° x 0.01°, averaged to census tracts, and weighted by population to calculate NO2 inequality as a function of race, ethnicity, and income. Selected cities exhibit a variety of racial, ethnic, and income segregation patterns that are relevant for the spatial resolution of TROPOMI observations. We investigate differences in NO2 inequality on weekdays, weekends, and seasonally to assess the role of diesel trucking emissions and changes in the NO2 lifetime on inequality.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMA111.0016D
- Keywords:
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- 0478 Pollution: urban;
- regional and global;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0230 Impacts of climate change: human health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 0240 Public health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE