Locally grounded models for air quality in Africa: the power of TROPOMI to bridge African science and policy

Air quality (AQ), with its impacts on human & ecosystem health, agricultural productivity, economic growth, and climate change, is an issue that is increasingly important in the public eye. Tackling air quality issues requires bringing together timely and accurate scientific data with socio-economic data to create informed policies capable of effectuating lasting change.

While African ground-based air quality measurements have struggled to gain national and continental footholds, satellite data, especially high-resolution measurements from the TROPOMI satellite, can provide not only continental coverage but lend new insights for regional to city-scale air quality issues and inform climate policies. In Africa, the sources of pollutants are often a complex mix of anthropogenic (e.g. power generation, domestic/household burning of coal, charcoal, kerosene and wood, agricultural practices to burn crop residue, waste burning, and road transport) and natural sources (e.g. desert dust, biomass burning). It is expected that Africa’s economic and demographic transition will further increase levels of air pollution.

To this end, researchers from the African Studies Centre Leiden have teamed up with colleagues from the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI)and the University of Pretoria for a joint project that promotes the use of AQ satellite data  to inform African climate and air quality policies. This research wants to bring together natural and social sciences to understand the local emissions and investigate the socio-economic reasons and impact behind them. It is a direct result of the workshop organised jointly (also with the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)) at the Leiden-based Lorentz Centre in April 2022, where it was concluded that only once AQ models are embedded in the local realities, the data can truly inform policies on air quality and climate on the continent.

The aims of the project are to:

I. bring together natural and social sciences to understand and model local emissions and investigate the socio-economic reasons and impact behind them;

II. promote the use of AQ satellite data (TROPOMI) to inform African climate and air quality policies.