Dataset. This data set consists of observations from the Sentinel-5 Precursor (Sentinel-5P) satellite of the European Commission’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme. Sentinel-5P is a polar orbiting satellite that completes 14 orbits of the Earth a day. It carries the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) which is a spectrometer that senses ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS), near (NIR) and short wave infrared (SWIR) to monitor ozone, methane, formaldehyde, aerosol, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. This sattelite is managed in The Netherlands by SRON and KNMI.
I1: Covid-19 Pollution Decrease. Covid-19 impact on air pollution. Create a visualization (e.g. videos) of the various levels of (polluting) gases that TROPOMI measures and visualize the global impact of the covid-19 pandemic on these emissions geographically and over time at various heights of the troposphere. While a previous LSDE showcase produced a nice viusualization, their results can probably be improved -- at the very least the analysis should be extended up until the current time.
Summary.
The project is interesting, navigating the TROPOMI datasets, identifying and extracting interesting data from it (NO2, SO2 and CH4 were chosen). This visualization (which regrettably is slow and takes long to load) allows a comparison between 2020 and 2019 on the same date, which gives an indication in how far lockdown measures caused changes in these polluting gas levels. Of course, the metereological conditions are not the same on those two compared points of time, so the comparison is not perfect, but gives some ideas.
For people in The Netherlands, it is alarming to see how high levels of pollution are in general here. The kockdown did have an effect in terms of polluting gas levels, however moderate only. The effect is observed to be more substantial in Norther Italy, for instance, and also completely removed high pollution levels in Barcelona and Madrid.
Data curiosity: **** Writing: *** Technical difficulties mastered: *** Visualization coolness: ***
