Complete Transcript available.

Complete Transcript available.

Narration:

Transcript:

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We have a number of residents,

particularly residents living

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near warehouse environments that

experience poor air quality on a

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daily basis. And when

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you have a health condition or

are sensitive, you don't want

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that kind of pollution in your

house.

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The best solutions are data

driven. When people are given

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the right data, they will make

the right decisions for my

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community, and communities

across Chicago and the region.

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So NASA has this new initiative,

and it's called Earth science to

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action. And part of what we're

doing is we want to understand

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the sources of air pollution and

how it gets transported in the

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atmosphere. And these

stakeholders are able to make

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the air safer to breathe. Ground

level ozone, it physically burns

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your lungs. NO2 is a toxic gas.

It is linked with pediatric

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asthma. PM2.5-- the small

particles you breathe in,

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they're small enough that they

can go through your lungs into

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your bloodstream. TEMPO stands

for Tropospheric Emissions

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Monitoring of Pollution, it will

measure air pollution over North

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America, every daylight hour,

this is really going to be a

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game changer helping us

understand pollution at the

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neighborhood scale.

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Today's a really exciting day

for both NASA and NOAA. Today,

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the TEMPO satellite started its

first scans of North America.

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We've got three aircraft in the

air flying over Chicago, got

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dozens of instruments on the

DC-8, getting the in situ levels

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of air pollutants and greenhouse

gases. And then flying above us

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right now is the P3 in the G5

with remote sensing payload

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decks. It's a very exciting day,

historic day. We've been waiting

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over a decade, for the TEMPO

instrument to start collecting

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data.

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You know, you build a satellite,

it takes years to build it and

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you test it in the lab, but you

never know if it's going to

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work. When you ship it across

the country, you put it on a

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rocket, you launch it into

space. And so yesterday we found

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out that TEMPO really is going

to be able to measure air

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quality over North America. One

of the exciting things about

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this AEROMMA STAQS field

campaign is going to help us

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calibrate and validate the TEMPO

satellite. So while we're

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flying, both the remote sensing

and the sensors that are

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measuring what's in the

atmosphere down low, TEMPO is

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scanning overhead. And so we're

going to use that data to help

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improve the precision and

accuracy of the TEMPO satellite.

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We're on an airbase Wright

Patterson Air Base in Dayton,

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Ohio. There's jets taking off

and transports taking off and we

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have hundreds of people here. We

want to understand the sources

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of air pollution and how it gets

transported in the atmosphere.

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And what's wonderful is we'll

work with our partners at EPA

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and NOAA to help make sure that

NASA and these stakeholders are

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able to make the air safer to

breathe.

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If there's one takeaway from

this mission, what we want to

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learn is how can satellites help

us address air quality issues.

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We have this new asset into

space with TEMPO, and it will be

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operating over the next few

years. So this is a pathfinder

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for us to integrate these types

of measurements into air quality

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decision making. So there's a

lot of people that are doing

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research in the community. And

as we partner up and put our

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assets together, we can actually

do something bigger than any

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individual component could do

alone.

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Right now in the United States,

EPA has air pollution monitors

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in certain neighborhoods around

the US but we don't know the air

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pollution in every neighborhood.

The TEMPO satellite is going to

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get every hour during the

daytime. We'll see how pollution

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changes from the morning to the

afternoon to the evening we'll

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see pollution get transported

from one neighborhood to another

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and we'll be able to see where

we don't currently have monitors

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so we'll get a good picture of

environmental inequalities.

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Factories, industrial centers,

intermodal facilities, transport

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hubs, warehouses— all of these

facilities have higher emissions

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than other locations in the

city. Certain communities don't

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have the ability to influence

decisions on where these

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facilities are located. Because

of that many of these facilities

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are located in disadvantaged

communities and which is an

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environmental justice issue in

the city. One of the interesting

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things about Chicago is that

we're rapidly advancing our

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ability to characterize air

quality in the city. And one of

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the things we're learning is

that the observations that we

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have don't necessarily agree

with the lived experience of

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some of the residents in the

city.

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My family members, we all have

asthma. And so air quality is

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really important because we live

in a hot climate and that you

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want to open up your windows.

But you know, if you open up

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your windows, not only are you

going to get wind, but you're

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going to get polluted wind. And

when you have a health condition

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or are sensitive, you don't want

that kind of pollution in your

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house. Your house is your sacred

space that where you can be

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joyful and well in.

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Chicago happens to be the the

largest freight hub in North

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America, which means we have a

whole bunch of heavy duty

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vehicles coming through a number

of warehouses, and as they sit

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and idle, they'll be polluting

in their environments. And if

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you happen to be a resident in a

warehouse environment, you're

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going to be exposed to that much

more pollution.

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We have adjacent communities,

they have much higher street

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traffic from trucks, and the

pollution there is off the hooks

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and you just walking down the

street, you see truck after

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truck after truck. And so those

are in underserved

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neighborhoods, they have to live

with a high level of day to day

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pollution, it doesn't take

Canada being on fire for them to

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Air quality in Chicago is a

complex news story, because it

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suffer.

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doesn't affect everybody

equally. For one thing, there

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are two major things that lead

to bad air quality in Chicago,

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you've got locally generated

emissions, the interaction with

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sunshine, which leads to ozone

and particulate matter. But as

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we've seen, especially this

year, you have non locally

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driven air quality issues such

as that that comes from the

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Canadian wildfires. So TEMPO is

an amazing instrument. When we

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talk about both climate models

that DOE runs and spaceborn

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missions that NASA runs. It's

like your digital camera. It's

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getting higher and higher in

resolution. That's why we are

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partnering with the AEROMMA and

STAQS missions over Chicago,

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we're really creating actionable

data that will really make a

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difference in people's lives.

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I am really impressed with how

much big data has allowed us to

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really drill down and really

understand our community. When

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you go and ask for policy and

fiscal support to have the

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science with it. So it's not

just what we think. But it's

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what we know.

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We have TEMPO working we know

it's working. We have AEROMMA

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and STAQS datasets that are

going to help us calibrate it.

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And in October, the data is

going to be flowing into the

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NASA atmospheric science data

center. And so that will be

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publicly available to anyone in

particular, we know that our

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partners at the EPA and NOAA are

excited to use this data to

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understand air pollution in the

United States but also be able

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to use it to improve the air

quality forecast.