Mon, Jun 06, 2011
Sigma Space Corporation Is Participating In The NASA
DISCOVER-AQ Earth Venture Mission For Monitoring Pollution
The Sigma Space MPL and MiniMPL will be deployed by NASA
scientists at surface sites to provide 24-hour lidar monitoring of
boundary layer depth and vertical distribution of aerosols. These
sites will be collocated with airborne measurements of the vertical
profile of key trace species and boundary layer structure.
The NASA DISCOVER-AQ team finds the Sigma Space lidars desirable
because of the significant advantages offered by the instruments in
determining the vertical structure and optical properties of
aerosols and boundary layer depth. A principal goal of the
DISCOVER-AQ mission is to improve the use of satellite observations
to diagnose air quality at the Earth’s surface and to improve
the use of satellite data in air quality models.
“Using satellite observations to characterize air
pollution near Earth’s surface is a great technical
challenge, as well as a great opportunity for improved
decision-making and policy,” said Phil DeCola, Chief Science
Officer at Sigma Space, “and the NASA DISCOVER-AQ Earth
Venture Mission brings together advanced airborne and ground-based
measurement technologies, such as the Sigma Space MPL, which
together provide accurate measurements of local changes in aerosol
distributions that can effectively enhance the value of
measurements made from space.”
For similar reasons, MPL and MiniMPL also received great
attention from the meteorological community at the recently held
World Meteorological Organization Congress in Geneva. Sigma Space
collected requests from many delegates from European and African
countries for MPL measurements of urban pollution, desert dust, and
volcano ash.
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