By Roland Piquepaille
Thanks to a program called YourAir, thousands of people suffering from asthma and other breathing problems, and living in Central London will soon be able to be alerted of peaks of pollution by text messages sent to their cell phones. This program, which soon will be extended to other areas in London, has been developed with the help of the European Space Agency (ESA). Currently, YourAir uses air quality forecasts provided by satellites as well as information coming from local traffic roads. But it should soon incorporate more European regional data, as it becomes obvious to ESA researchers that a peak of pollution in London might have originated in the Ruhr Valley in Germany -- or even in Italy. Read more...As an example of what peaks of air pollution can look like, below is a picture showing the nitrogen dioxide concentrations over the city of London during a high-pollution event that occurred on November 15, 2000 (Credit: ESA).
But here is a better illustration, with this animation (in Macromedia Flash format).
Now, let's get back to the YourAir service.
Around a thousand asthma sufferers and other vulnerable individuals in Croydon should soon receive text message warnings to their mobile phones before elevated air pollution days, with additional patients in other London boroughs receiving the service later on.
The YourAir service predicts levels of the pollutants nitrogen dioxide, ozone and airborne particles -- exposure to which can harm people with asthma, lung and heart problems, and in the very highest concentrations can harm otherwise healthy people.
Even if current results are pretty accurate -- about 90% -- there are still ways for improvements, especially by incorporating other European regional data.
Regional air quality information is important because not all the pollution affecting a city actually originates there. Depending on the weather, studies show that up to half the air pollution found in some European cities might have come from elsewhere in the continent -- the Ruhr in Germany for instance, or as far away as Italy's Po Valley.
"With air pollution arising, its distribution drops off steeply away from major roads or other sources because it mixes vertically as well as horizontally," explained Iarla Kilbane-Dawe of Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC). "On most days the air rises, taking the pollution with it -- as high as 800 metres in the winter, or two kilometres in the summer. So within an hour or so of rush hour the concentrated pollution can waft away."
The YourAir service is being developed by different organizations through ESA, and trying to find more information is like peeling an onion. It is part of the PROMOTE project, intended to deliver atmospheric information to support informed decision making in this field and improve quality of life.
And PROMOTE is itself part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), a joint initiative between ESA and the European Union.
And to finish to peel the onion, where is the European Union going today? No one seems to know.
Sources: ESA news release, June 16, 2005; and various web sites
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