Integrating NASA Satellite Data Into VIEWS/TSS (NASA ROSES 2007)

To further enhance the value of VIEWS for the purposes of air quality decision support, the team collaborated in 2007 with the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to submit a NASA ROSES proposal to incorporate satellite data into VIEWS/TSS. The proposal was awarded, and work began at CIRA in mid-2008 to seamlessly integrate a wide variety of NASA satellite data into VIEWS.
The specific goals for this project are:
- Improve methods for identifying pollutant sources and their respective contributions to visibility impairment in Federal Class I Areas
- Improve fire emissions data used for current and future-year air quality assessments through calibration of a stochastic fire prediction model
- Facilitate interpretative analyses of ground-based, modeled, and emissions data by providing requirements for advanced analysis tools integrated in the DSS
- Demonstrate the augmented system capabilities to end users via observations, emissions data, and outputs from the Community Multiscale Air Quality model from historic and future-year applications
It is hoped that the satellite data, through their extensive temporal frequency and geographic coverage, will yield important insights into the temporal evolution and the three-dimensional distribution of atmospheric aerosols. In addition, air quality modeling specialists at UNC are using the satellite data to enhance the inputs and boundary conditions of the Community Multi-scale Air Quality Modeling System (CMAQ). Once the model has been appropriately augmented with the satellite data, the results will be added to the raw data already in VIEWS to provide a unique comparison between the original model results and those that have been augmented with the satellite data, an effort that is expected to improve the predictive capabilities of the air quality models and significantly increase understanding of both the observed and simulated systems as changes in anthropogenic and natural emissions occur over time. The availability of both the raw and model-integrated satellite data will complement the existing inventory of ground-based, modeled, and emissions data in VIEWS to provide end users with a uniquely comprehensive collection of air quality data that can be visualized and compared using an integrated set of tools.
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