Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Global air pollution map

ESA has issued a press release showing a global atmospheric NO2 map built up from the the last 18 months of Envisat measurements.

CREDIT: Institute for Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg
The image shows the global mean tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) vertical column density (VCD) between January 2003 and June 2004, as measured by the SCIAMACHY instrument on ESA's Envisat. The scale is in 1015 molecules/cm-2

Usually, despite the pervasive presence of trolls, you can usually rely on Slashdot to turn up some decent comments about technically related news. However the level of ignorance, scientific and political, displayed by some of the posters in response to this story is somewhat scary. So unless you're looking to make your blood boil, I'd steer clear this time. More details about the actual measurements can be found at PhysOrg.org.