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5 December 2007
Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features now available
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by Laura Naranjo
September 24, 2008
Houston has some of the most polluted air in the United States. The city and the ship channel that leads south to the Gulf of Mexico bustle with industrial activity, producing an unintended by-product that affects the entire southeastern portion of Texas: air pollution. Currently, Houston and several other urban areas in southeastern Texas do not meet air-quality standards established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The state of Texas has conducted several field studies, which revealed the largest pollution sources in the congested southeastern part of the state. However, officials found that efforts to reduce pollution produced in their cities have not consistently improved air quality.
To determine why some cities still fail to meet EPA air-quality standards, experts needed more information about how regional and even national pollution might be circulating into Texas. The most recent study, conducted in 2005 and 2006, collected data over the eastern half of the state and included remote sensing data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, flown on the NASA Aqua satellite. Wallace McMillan, an AIRS science team member, said, "We wanted to show the impact that satellites can have on studying air quality in the lowest portion of the atmosphere." By incorporating satellite data, scientists could observe not only how pollution circulated within the state, but also whether some of the pollution measured in Texas originated farther afield.
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