NO2 Observations from the Sentinel-5P Tropomi - Turkey

With the rapid population growth, both urbanization and transportation affect the air pollution, population health, and global warming. A number of air pollutants are released from industrial facilities and other activities and may cause adverse effects on human health and the environment. One of the biggest air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), is mainly caused as combustion of fossil fuels, and especially from traffic exhaust gases. Over the years, air pollution has been monitored using satellite remote sensing data. In this study, we investigate the relation of the tropospheric NO₂ retrieved from the recently launched Sentinel-5 Precursor, a low earth orbit atmosphere mission, dedicated for monitoring air pollution equipped with a spectrometer Tropomoi (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument), and the population density over Turkey. For this purpose, we use the mean value of NO₂ collected from July 2018 to January 2019, and the statistic population data from 2017. The results showed significant correlation higher than 0.72 between the population density and the maximum NO₂ values. For future studies, we recommend investigating the correlation of different air pollutants with population, and other factors contributing to air and environmental pollution.