24STUDENT A Comparative Analysis of Tropospheric NO2: Evaluating TEMPO Satellite Data Against Airborne Measurements

Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) plays a major role in atmospheric chemical reactions; the inorganic compound both contributes to tropospheric ozone production and reacts with volatile organic compounds to create health-hazardous particulate matter. The presence of NO₂ in the atmosphere is largely due to anthropogenic activity, making NO₂ at the forefront of policy decisions and scientific monitoring. The Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) satellite launched in 2023 with the goal of monitoring pollution across North America. The publicly-accessible data became available for use in May 2024, however parts of the data remain unvalidated and in beta, creating a need for an in situ validation of its data products. Here we analyze TEMPO’s tropospheric NO₂ measurements and compare them to aloft NO₂measurements collected during the NASA Student Airborne Research Project (SARP) 2024 airborne campaign. Six of the campaign flights recording NO₂ performed a vertical spiral, providing vertical column data that was adjusted to ambient conditions for comparison against the corresponding TEMPO values. Statistical analyses indicate we have reasonable evidence to conclude that TEMPO satellite data and the flight-collected data record similar values. This research fills a critical knowledge gap through the utilization of aloft NO₂ measurements to validate NASA’s newly-launched TEMPO satellite. It is expected that future users of TEMPO data can apply these results to better inform project creation and research.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) plays a major role in atmospheric chemical reactions; the inorganic compound both contributes to tropospheric ozone production and reacts with volatile organic compounds to create health-hazardous particulate matter. The presence of NO₂ in the atmosphere is largely due to anthropogenic activity, making NO₂ at the forefront of policy decisions and scientific monitoring. The Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) satellite launched in 2023 with the goal of monitoring pollution across North America. The publicly-accessible data became available for use in May 2024, however parts of the data remain unvalidated and in beta, creating a need for an in situ validation of its data products. Here we analyze TEMPO’s tropospheric NO₂ measurements and compare them to aloft NO₂measurements collected during the NASA Student Airborne Research Project (SARP) 2024 airborne campaign. Six of the campaign flights recording NO₂ performed a vertical spiral, providing vertical column data that was adjusted to ambient conditions for comparison against the corresponding TEMPO values. Statistical analyses indicate we have reasonable evidence to conclude that TEMPO satellite data and the flight-collected data record similar values. This research fills a critical knowledge gap through the utilization of aloft NO₂ measurements to validate NASA’s newly-launched TEMPO satellite. It is expected that future users of TEMPO data can apply these results to better inform project creation and research.